Dear Editor,

Increased anxiety associated with schoolwork and frustrations with the recent occurences of the school may sound familiar. Although these issues are perhaps quite substantial and will require significant action and time to resolve, I believe that taking certain simpler yet nevertheless essential measures may be most imperative at this time. Most students will assert that lunch at our highschool seems to go by in the blink of an eye. Students scarcely have time to finish eating their lunch during this period, let alone attempt to leave campus for food and return without being late to third period. The desire for a longer lunch in which students could enjoy an adequate amount of time to leave campus and do other social activities besides eating, is widespread among all students in Manitou High School.

The most common rebuttal to the popular suggestion of an extended lunch period is that a certain quantity of student-teacher contact hours is required by law. However, the lunch period offered on the thursday before Thanksgiving is compelling evidence that a lunch of adequate length is not actually so difficult to implement.

As the high school staff enjoyed a thanksgiving meal together, all of us students were bubbling with excitement for the hour-long lunch we had graciously been provided. My friends and I had arrived at a mutual craving for Raising Cane’s chicken fingers, a place that was a twenty minute drive from school. Now it must be understood that on a typical school day, such an ambitious lunch venture would have been rendered decidedly impossible.

Our journey sputtered to a rocky start, as our group experienced a severe case of vehicle indecision which ate up at least ten minutes of precious freedom. Upon arriving at an eventual decision, we soon encountered a significantly more impactful delay: the Garden of the Gods road was closed for construction! Our hearts dropped like a failed egg-drop project smashing to pieces on the pavement. Then a gnawing panic began to eat away at my mind as we attempted to retrace our steps and complete our journey through a detour. When we finally arrived at Canes however, we had in fact so much time that we felt like we had just won the lottery. Finally returning to school, despite the numerous delays that our party encountered, we had time to spare before our third class of the day.

So where did all this extra time come from? Every class seemed to be just as long as any other day. A mere ten minutes had been deducted from each class and none had even been taken from the useless period of advisory! Now it is clear to most that advisory is essentially a pointless portion of time that is enforced to meet student-teacher contact hour requirements.

However, even if an insignificant five minutes were deducted from each period and perhaps ten or fifteen from advisory, lunch would be greatly improved along with the overall happiness and contentment of the students. Such a minor task would bring incredible joy and justice unto students who at the moment feel quite disheartened by recent events and indignant towards many policies and trends of the school. Without a doubt, a small but popular change like this would accomplish great things in increasing student-school pride and creating an overall positive atmosphere for a high school that is dearly in need of a positive revival.

Sincerely,

Sean Lowe