Good Longhorn News

Have you ever opened the school lunch form and decided you aren’t going to eat lunch that day? I don’t know about you, but if there’s something on the google form that just doesn’t sound appetizing, I’ll wait to eat until I get home, hours later. Not eating causes students brain activity to wane which is why I propose open lunches.

Open lunches will promote student independence and responsibility. Having that option to have open lunch will mean that students will use gas money and use money for food at restaurants, this means they have to be responsible for how much money they use in a day. If they use it irresponsibility then they will have consequences, not only from financial struggles but also from their parents getting angry over their irresponsibility. It’s not the school’s job to hold the students hand every step they go, especially as they get closer to being out into the real world. 

Leaving school and going to get whatever food you want should be a reward. Seeing as freshmen are still not quite developed from their middle school years, and even some of the sophomores, I say that we should give juniors and seniors the opportunity to have open lunches. Here’s the catch: it’ll work the same way interventions do. If you are on the interventions list, then you don’t get to leave. This rule is a better reward for getting their grades up than just early release.

Open lunches would provide people the option to go get food if they don’t like the school food and ensure that they actually eat instead of starving themselves. According to Piedmont.org, when skipping a meal your blood sugar will decrease, which then can lead to disorientation and not allow the student to focus properly on school work. It also said that low blood sugar can cause people to feel grumpy, confused, and fatigued, which can lead to higher levels of stress. When skipping meals our body goes into survival mode and this can cause your body to crave food and nine times out of ten those foods are unhealthy and all attempts of eating healthy go out the window, which could cause obesity. As Haley Robinson, a Piedmont clinical dietitian, said, “When you are that hungry, anything goes.” 

While we don’t have time on traditional days, I argue that we have time for open lunches on hybrid days. During hybrid days students will be sitting in their homeroom for over an hour, most doing nothing but sitting there sleeping or just being bored. Now if students want even more time to go out and eat, then I think that during longhorn period if you check your grades with your seminar teacher and they give you a pass on having good enough grades, then you can leave during that fifth period for more time. 

Overall, I believe that having open lunches will help students want to get their grades up and it will ensure that they don’t starve themselves due to not liking the school food. On top of that it’ll teach them an important life skill of being responsible. If we trust students with the responsibility of their education, why can’t we trust them with the responsibility of their lunch?