The closure of Carlmont’s bleachers during the first 15 minutes of lunchtime has perplexed students, with many wondering whether they will fully reopen again.
During the first semester of the 2021-2022 school year, the bleachers were a common location for students to eat lunch. However, since the start of the second semester, the bleachers have been closed during the beginning of lunch. It has disrupted the lunch routines of many Carlmont students, forcing them to either stand or find new spots to eat.
The valuable space lost from the bleachers being closed has resulted in the overcrowding of many other popular eating areas on campus. Sophomore Samantha Parikh has noticed that there are fewer places to eat, making lunch a less pleasant experience.
“When my friends and I used to eat on the bleachers, there was a lot of space to eat and chat. Now, we sit on the curb to eat, which is a lot less comfortable and makes it harder to enjoy lunch,” Parikh said.
Sophomore Arshan Perwad reiterated this, believing that the bleachers were an ideal lunch spot.
“My friends and I now stand near the quad during lunch, and I’ve found that it’s much more crowded and hard to find a place that we can go back to every day to eat,” Perwad said.
Parikh has found the closed bleachers confusing as there seemingly had been no answer to the problem.
“I don’t understand why they’ve been closed, as there weren’t any problems eating there last semester,” Parikh said.
Carlmont’s administrative vice principal Gregg Patner, who took the lead in closing the bleachers, explained why the bleachers had been closed during the being of lunch in the second semester.
“Unfortunately, in the first semester, there was a lot of concerning behavior on the bleachers. A lot of trash was dumped and needed to be picked up, and there were altercations like pushing and shoving matches and kids throwing food at each other, all of which became challenging to manage,” Patner said.
As a result, Patner believes that closing the bleachers for the beginning of lunch will combat these issues, discouraging all these things from reoccurring.
“Our thought was to close it during the first 15 minutes of lunchtime, while people are eating so that they won’t be inclined to bring their trash onto the bleachers. And then they have access to the field for the next 25 to 30 minutes of lunch,” Patner said.
When hearing about this new policy, Perwad expressed confusion at the bleachers being open only during the latter half of lunch.
“I never knew that the bleachers were actually open some of the time, as they have been empty the entirety of lunch during the whole second semester so far. The school needs to do a better job broadcasting new policies to the students so that we’re aware of what we can or can’t do,” Perwad said.
Even though students haven’t recognized that the bleachers are open for the latter half of the lunch period, Patner has seen that by closing the bleachers during the beginning of lunch, the amount of trash left on the ground has significantly reduced.
“I definitely feel that the trash in the quad is not as extensive as it was on the football field or the bleachers. We have solid supervision in the quad, and there have been fewer altercations. Unfortunately, trash is going to be a problem on all parts of campus no matter what, and it’s one that we constantly are trying to manage,” Patner said.
