The most honest reporting I feel that I can do right now is give my take on the everyday Ramaz student’s complaints. As students, we like to whine: the food is too greasy, the dress code is too restrictive, the administration is non-communicative, the classes are too long, so on, and so forth. As much as I’d like to say that I’m perfectly content – that I spend my days skipping through a sun-soaked field of roses and rainbows and positivity – I’m not.

Let’s start with Schoology. Whereas schedules used to be emailed out or posted by grade advisors, modified days are now hidden under the calendar tab, a system which forces you through two links, several tabs, and a battle with the troll from Dora before you can find out what time fourth period ends. Also, there needs to be a way to remove old assignments from the “overdue” screen – it’s extraordinarily stressful to reach June and still be staring at “HW 9/14” in a tab, especially when you actually did the homework on time but didn’t submit it through Schoology.

My biggest bone to pick with the school is over lunch food. Lunch periods are already too short for everything they’re used for: college or teacher meetings, socializing, caffeinating, doing homework, studying, organizing, and perhaps least importantly, eating. Needing to wait on the long lunch lines is frustrating enough, but then to have to grapple with the bacteria-filled hands of dozens of other students for a rectangular piece of plastic (also known as a tray) which is (1) not useful, (2) bulky, and (3) occasionally marked with the stains of yesterday’s lunch is enough to make me want to skip lunch altogether and survive off of gum and the tastiest pages of my math notebook. (I recommend derivatives with a side of eraser shavings.) While I’m complaining about the lunchroom, I firmly believe that people who take the parmesan and salt shakers away from the salad bar should be given detention. Students who take the parmesan away do so purposefully and are thus guilty of malicious intent and first-degree murder of my pasta.

This is a problem I would encounter less, of course, if I didn’t have eighth period lunch four out of every five days in a school week. Eighth period lunch is the very definition of cruel and unusual punishment, a scheme I am convinced has been concocted to lower the morale of upperclassmen and thus prevent them from leading an insurrection against the powers that be. If I eat breakfast at 6:00 AM (which I do), even the end of davening and the stale cereal that accompanies is three hours after my meal, and lunch at 1:35 PM is over seven hours removed. Seven hours is a ridiculously long amount of time to wait, even if you have snack in between. I’m no less likely to get hungry because I’m a senior instead of a freshman. By the time I get to lunch, I’m irritable and tired and no help at all to whichever poor souls are scheduled to meet with me that period. It would be one thing if we had time earlier in the day to go down to the lunchroom and grab some food to-go, but as we need to run straight from class to class, we don’t have enough time to do much but buy snacks from the vending machines. Speaking of those little devils, the machines are way overpriced, but as they have a captive audience we all end up paying three times the amount we would for a small package of empty calories. Nobody I know is full after eating a bag of chips, especially someone who knows their lunch has been postponed until 1:40 PM. I feel like, in the course of the four sets of GO elections I’ve lived through, I’ve been promised snacks during homeroom at least as many times. At this point, I don’t know if I’m the idiot for believing it would happen, or if the school bureaucracy is actively on a mission to obstruct justice, but they’re just shooting themselves in the foot. Snickers was right: being hungry makes people mean, and feeding the student body more would, I suspect, solve much of the school’s disciplinary problems.

On that note, a few quick notes about behavior: standing in the middle of a crowded hallway or walking slowly through it should, if it is not already, be a crime. Time is invaluable, and anyone holding up traffic flow in the school’s major thruways is robbing crucial minutes from their peers. Furthermore, someone moving that slowly has waived their right to act surprised when a frustrated upperclassman inevitably comes by and shoves them out of the way. On the same note, elevators are for teachers, people who medically require them, and students who have a large number of floors to traverse in a very short time period. They are not a personal shuttle between lockers on 3 and the lounge on 4. I’m not opposed to having such a transportation system in the school, but until the administration decides to open their own MTA with express and local cars, students who are able should brave the perils of the ten steps between floors.

Of course I could keep on complaining for a year, until I’ve alienated just about every student group in the school (my apologies to the Hallway Blockers Student Union). However, I would like to clarify that there’s been a point to this little exercise. The school isn’t perfect; no institution is. Complaints that we have pale in comparison to even the most minor problems in the life of someone in a third world country or the like. Think about how spoiled I sound- or actually am- and then take a moment and consider the next time you’re on the verge of pushing a freshman out of your path in the hallway.

Sincerely,

Esther J. Beck