The lines seem to be never-ending. People shove and cut. By the time you get your lunch, it’s time to go to your fourth block. To make matters worse, you might not even have a seat at a table on a rainy day. People who have their third-block in the gym, 400 & 4100 hall, 801, 616 and 618, these are the many problems they experience.
Before Covid-19, East Meck only had four lunches. Afterwards, they added E lunch to reduce the amount of students in the lunchroom, starting from 12:10 to 12:32.
“Before we had this many students on campus, we had four lunches. But we got more enrollment at East Mecklenburg, so we had to have five lunches,” Principal Rick Parker said, “We had to spread it out because every lunch would be really packed”.
However, unlike most lunches that are organized by subjects or buildings – they are scrambled and considered “leftovers”. This can be very difficult for students who have a longer commute to and from lunch.
“I have class in the 4000, it’s a long walk,” Jonathan Rivera, a senior said, “My classes are so far apart, I got to go straight to class.”
It can take up to 5 minutes to walk to the lunchroom and longer if the main building is locked. With the wait time to grab lunch, eating lunch can be reduced to less than 10 minutes.
“The bells don’t go off in 4000 so when we don’t really know when to leave unless someone reminds us,” Asenya Mobae, a senior said, “And then by the time we do leave, it’s already a good five-six minutes into lunch.”
And for many students, lunch may be the only opportunity to see their friends. The crowdedness can diminish the time to get lunch, to speak to a friend, and adequately fuel a student for the rest of the school day.
Not only do people struggle with the little amount of time to eat lunch, many express their frustration of getting their preferred choices to eat or not having anything to eat at all. Consequently, why people cut the lunch line so they can avoid having what most students call the leftover food.
Yet, it’s not only the students who feel the pressure of E lunch. It’s the people who serve lunch to the students as well and they tend to be overlooked.
Ms. Stevenson, a cafeteria staff at East, talks about the pressure of last lunch when serving kids, “The kids are always jumping, they are always crowded. They disrespect us for no reason,” she said.
With the many kids and two to three people serving them at time, it can be quite overwhelming for them to deal with the traffic jam.
“They rush us and they don’t give us a lot of time to get rung up,” Stevenson said, “It’s just out of order.”
How many students are in this lunch exactly? E lunch has an estimate of 565 students on A day and 653 on B day. But is E lunch really the most crowded lunch out of all?
“A lunch was super big,” Assistant Principal Kathryn Bauer said, “In the beginning of the year, A lunch was 684 on A days and on B days, 714.”
However, things like students eating outside or eating in their classrooms can explain why despite the numbers of students – it may not be as crowded as it seems.
“They need to send some other people to other lunches – honestly. I’ve heard D lunch is really empty,” Rivera says.
Overcrowding will not always be a problem. Despite all of this, the solution to overcrowding is on the horizon. Recently, CMS passed a $2.5 billion bond that will fund 30 projects to benefit students and schools. This is chance for East to accommodate the growing population for lunch, hopefully resulting in shorter lines,
“When we get the new school, we will have a bigger facility and then we will have the space for it,” Parker said.
