Lunch in Bad Weather

Lunch+in+Bad+Weather

Early this morning it began to rain, making CHS’ front lawn picnic tables unusable. So where will CHS students go for lunch?

Without the outside tables for use, students may have to sit in the corridors or CHS classrooms, places students typically avoid for fear of COVID-19 spread. One such student is Parker Haymart, a sophomore who spent last year online. Haymart usually sits in Kerrytown, but he thinks more seats in the hallways should be added for when there’s bad weather.

“If everyone was piled into these tables, there would be a lot of people really close together,” said Haymart about the tables on the third floor. “I don’t know how safe everyone else is, but when everyone’s just in one area, it definitely could be scarier.”

Junior McKenna Duman is also nervous about the current lunch situation.

“For lunch I would always just like to kind of hang out in my forum’s room,” Duman said about her freshman year before the COVID-19 pandemic made lunch more complicated.

McKenna Duman eating ice cream on the CHS third floor. Duman used to eat lunch in her forum room when the weather was bad, but with the pandemic is unsure where to turn. (Laurel Peterson)

Another person who thinks seating for lunch should be paid more attention to is Jen Niner, a CHS ASL teacher.

“Kids have always kind of [eaten in places] like Craft Theater, hallways, or classrooms,” Niner said. “As long as Community has been going on I don’t feel like [lunch space] has been that big of an issue, prior to Covid-19.”

However, Rebecca Westrate, CHS assistant dean, is confident the lunch situation can be figured this out.

“I think we’re gonna have to open up spaces that aren’t kind of traditional spaces where we had lunch to be more common areas, and I’m sure it’s something that we can figure out,” Westrate said. “I think everyone understands the importance of that. I think it’s just a matter of getting that going.”