Lunch, a meal eaten in the middle of the day, typically lighter than an evening meal, serving as something to hold you over until dinner. During school, however, it’s more than a meal, it’s a mental break, it’s a time to socialize, it’s a time to get re-energized and ready for the next half of school. Although it serves the same purpose no matter what school you go to, the timing of how long lunch is varies a lot depending on what school you go to.

Take Brooke Point for example. It’s a school in Stafford County that has around 2,000 students. The duration of Lunch is one hour and every student goes to lunch at the same time. Any students who need to make up work or need extra help from a teacher can voluntarily go to that teacher and stay with them for however long they need during this period, as well as kids who just enjoy a specific teacher’s company.

This schedule is called “One-Lunch” and in the students’ eyes, this is heaven, but from a teacher’s point of view, it seems to be a recipe for chaos.

Here at Osbourn, we have a total of 4 lunches, the class you’re in at the time determines if you have lunch 1,2,3, or 4, with each lunch lasting exactly 25 minutes. Staff seem to be pretty content with this, but students have an entirely different opinion. “There’s not enough time to eat, I’m usually interacting with friends, but by the time I try to eat, it feels like it’s only been 5 minutes and lunch is already over,” said Emanuel Bockarie.

“If lunch was longer it would boost morale, and everyone would be more productive,” said Jackson Christensen. A happy student is obviously more likely to be respectful and more suggestible to instruction. Why make teachers deal with students who are cranky that they didn’t get to finish their macaroni and cheese because they wanted to socialize?

Some students even feel that the timing should resemble Brooke Point’s schedule. Some have even voiced that if not an hour, then they’d like at least 20 extra minutes to relax.  “We need 45 minutes of lunch for a mental break. There would be fewer fights because there would be more security, ” said student Elijah Armstead.

“Lunch should be 35 minutes longer and we would be much happier. Therefore we would have fewer conflicts, I think they just don’t want us wandering the halls,” said Zarie Joseph.

One such reason lunch may be as short as it is could be for security reasons.  “Lunch is perfectly fine how it is, I can tell when something’s about to start. I just watch people who are standing up, I’ve been doing this long enough to be able to tell when something’s about to start,” said SRO Kenyetta Grigsby.

It’s obvious that the reason for lunch being the way that it is isn’t because security and staff are incapable of handling it, unexpected changes might just cause unexpected reactions. Be that as it may, not all staff believe it has anything to do with fights, some staff just believe that there’s no reason to fix something that isn’t broken. “Lunch is good the way it is. I’ll be honest, I think we’ve connected more with the students, so we are more able to come to an understanding before a fight starts. It’s all about support,” said AP Derek Smith.

OHS’s lunch schedule has both its benefits and its downsides. The great thing about our school is that if we don’t like something we have the power to voice it. What’s important is that we appreciate our school and have fun during the time we have, because in future positions you may take on, your superiors may not be so generous as to provide you with almost half an hour of free time.