Because of recent administrative decisions, the school added an additional lunch at the start of the semester.

“The joy of not having our hallways covered in trash and with students has been amazing,” facilities associate principal Michelle Dudley said. “It seems that when they’re leaving lunch, they’re not as tense and it’s much quieter.”

Starting Jan. 8, there was a shift from three campus lunches to four. As a result, lunches are now 30 minutes instead of 45 minutes.

“We were trying to keep it long for the teachers because they work hard and deserve the extra 15 minutes,” Dudley said. “Now that we made lunch shorter, that third period class tends to be a little bit longer.”

The two factors that contributed to the change are the growing campus size and maintaining the cafeteria’s cleanliness. 

“We were doing the entire cafeteria plus two hallways, so we could never quite get everything all cleaned up,” Dudley said. “But now that we can contain the lunches to the lunchroom and the custodians now get to clean four times instead of three, which is more manageable.”

Contrary to popular and widespread rumors, fighting wasn’t the cause of the new lunch schedule. However, there has been a noticeable change in fighting.

“I believe that there have been less fights because of the shorter lunches and because they no longer let us stay in the hall,” sophomore Austin Davis said. “I don’t think that shortening lunch was necessary to fix its problems, but changes to sitting in the hallway is something I understand.”

With these changes, some sacrifices had to be made at an administrative level.

“We tried to do it by department because we think it’s really important for teachers,” Dudley said. “But the only department that had to be split up was the Social Studies department. . I’d prefer to give my teachers lunch with who they want lunch with and still honor both sides, but it’s such a huge undertaking to put that all together.”

There has been some critical response from students and staff to the changes.

“The new lunch schedule has made lunches too short to get through the line and has led my friends to bring their lunches to class,” junior Mason Ross said. “The change wasn’t necessary and the freshmen just need to be disciplined enough to not fight.”

However, many students have had a positive reaction to the new lunches.

“Although I agree with most of the changes, I think they should extend the lunches back while keeping the other rules,” Davis said. “Those are the ones that really help with maintaining the fights at lunch.”