With the first month of school wrapping up, many Upper School students have started to settle into their usual eating spots on campus: sophomores on the third floor benches, juniors in the alcove, and seniors in the third floor catboxes. There seems to be no specific eating area for the freshmen. Many students say the freshmen area is the fourth floor cat boxes, but freshmen have expressed their dislike of this area.
Freshman Amelia Luera claims that the fourth floor cat boxes are “inconvenient” because of the lack of wifi in the hallway. It’s hard to complete homework during lunch if the wifi doesn’t work and for many freshmen, lunch is their only free period. Since many freshmen don’t want to be in the fourth floor cat boxes, the freshmen have resorted to finding new areas on campus. Since there are few eating areas in the Upper School in general, freshmen have found sitting in areas where other Upper School students sit are the most practical.
Some Upper School students have opinions on this, both bad and good. Senior Gabriel Vilus says that he’s in favor of the freshmen finding new spots to eat. “I was a freshman once, too. Like, I used to sit in places, and I used to be told, oh, you’re invading my space,” Vilus said. Because of this, he believes that we shouldn’t be mad at the freshman. “Let’s stop being mean to the freshman for no reason,” Vilus said. “We were freshmen, too.”
On the other hand, many Upper School students don’t like freshmen finding new spots in the Upper School. Sophomore Laylani Pomales has come across freshmen not only crowding eating areas but hallways and stairways as well. “I try to walk down to the library hallway, and there’s just a crowd of them on the floor,” Pomales said, “They always walk in bunches, and it really bugs me when I’m trying to go up the stairs.”
Junior Ava Lin pointed out that there have been designated areas for years. Each grade has either been in the same spot each year until they graduate or sat in a specific area for that grade. “I just think there are a lot of limited spaces, and there are, like, areas that grades have been in for multiple years,” Lin said. She has seen that grades have claimed the same spot for most of high school, so it’s weird when freshmen sit there. “I usually sit in the alcove, and then sometimes there are freshmen there,” Lin said.
Freshman Amelia Luera says that a way we should fix this is to just find more areas to sit. “We need to respect designated areas because they have been here a while,” Luera said.
Sophomore Laylani Pomales believes that we can fix it by not having the freshmen travel in groups, so it will be easier to walk around campus and find spots without crowds of freshmen being there. Freshmen must be aware of the ways they move through the school.
“I think it would be good to create other spaces,” Lin said.
Vilus also believes this but he mainly thinks we can fix this problem by upperclassmen being welcoming to the freshmen. “I think somebody needs to just remind everybody to be nicer because I think it’s just an issue of people being annoyed at freshmen,” Vilus said.
Parker’s Upper School is pretty territorial with their spaces around campus. This affects many students but specifically freshmen which causes them to find more places to sit.
Finally, I sent out a google form to see where students of each grade sit in the school. Here are the results of those who responded to the google form. The majority of sophomores that filled out the form sit at the fourth floor tables or the college counseling room. The majority of juniors that filled out the form ended with a tie with library hallway and the alcove. For the seniors that filled out the form, there is a clear winner of the third floor catboxes. With the freshman, their responses fluctuate. This shows that the freshmen that answered the form still struggle to find a place to sit on campus.
