I think I’m overdue a rant, so here’s one for September. I’ll begin, however, with a bit of background. At my school there has always been a problem with lunch queues. That being that they are just too long! Many different solutions have been tested (namely giving lower years priority) but they all seem to discriminate against the upper years and have been happening as I’ve gone up the school! However, in January, the school seemed to have cracked it. The area known as Donachers (no, I don’t know why either) was transformed into a dining hall for the specials, baked potatoes, soup and sandwiches, thus splitting the traffic. It was good, because when I needed to get into and out of lunch quickly (namely for music rehearsals) I could go there and have lunch in no time. It wasn’t perfect but it was a good solution.
However, at the start of this acedemic year, the school authorities decided to improve Donachers even more, making it a full dining hall and split the traffic by year group. In the first week, it was excellent with it being just for the Sixth Form. There were little queues and the whole vibe was excellent. School had finally cracked it – problem solved. The other half of my mind told me “too good to be true”, and indeed that was what it turned out to be. For the main dining hall was still suffering from severe queuing, so for this week Donachers has been opened to the Lower School too. This means that they have priority between 12.35 and 12.50 and between 1.15 and 1.35.
After the blissfully short queues of last week, this has come as a nasty shock to us Sixth Formers. The stupid thing is, that even without Donachers being extended, we could have entered the main dining hall at 1.35 last year, maybe even earlier. Plus, in reality the food is running out by the time we get there, and all extra-curricular activities begin at 1.40. It seems that the school hasn’t thought this one through fully, as this is actually even worse than what we had last year.
I can see the other side of the argument, and I’m sure that if I was in the Middle School I’d be grateful for the change. I don’t blame the Lower School, or think that we are in any way above them, but we didn’t have this preferencial treatment when we were in Year 7 and 8. As a compromise, how about having Donachers for the Lower School at 12.35, when the majority of them have their lunch, letting one class have priority in Donachers at 1.10, before letting the Sixth Form in at 1.15? This would work far better than the current situation which is stupid. I sincerely hope that this is just another test, and that something fairer to all comes in very shortly.
Freebie from the Flames 