High schools have issues with students being late to class and Kennedy is no exception, with hallways crowded with a stampede of students rushing to their classes.
Freshman Olivia Westercamp says her expectations of Kennedy before she arrived for the school year were accurate. She expected the school to be crowded but along with the amount of people, she had the looming fear of not being able to get to her classes on time.
“I would just try to clear it up a bit more, making sure people aren’t stopping and standing there, actually making sure they’re where they are supposed to be,” Westercamp said.
While it is expected for there to be crowds, new students don’t anticipate the extent of the crowds. The rowdiness of students during passing time comes as a shock to incoming freshmen.
While an increased passing time may be a good temporary solution, there would be flaws in this plan. Some students may use extra passing time to get through the halls safely and timely, while others will take advantage of leisure time and make it more difficult to navigate the halls, clumping together and socializing with their friends or goofing off in the hallways.
“Honestly I knew about the hallway crowding thing because my brother is a senior but it was a big step up from middle school for sure,” freshman Chavah Evanschwartz said. “So my first day of freshman year, I went into that knowing that the hallways were going to be pretty packed. But I didn’t know that it was shoulder to shoulder and all of that stuff, that was a bit of a struggle.”
Evanschwartz identified issues with students in D lunch not having the ability to get out of lunch a few minutes early and competing for hall space as the link from the foyer to the cafeteria bottlenecked during the passing period.
“I think Kennedy should take action and maybe take a minute off of every class period because usually, those minutes are students loitering on their phones waiting for the bell to ring anyway. This could provide us with extra minutes of passing time every day so students have more time to get where they need to be,” Evanschwartz said.
