Opinion: Viking Dining: What’s the Fix?

Sunnyslope lunch has many problems, and it’s no new issue for students, faculty, or administration.
With only thirty minutes for lunch, two lunch periods, over two thousand students total, and Sunnyslope’s administration not having enough manpower or funds to get a fix for these issues, students want a quicker solution.
However, changing the lunch schedule to have the first lunch start at 10:18, end at 10:48, the second lunch at 10:56, end at 11:26, and a third lunch at 11:34 could fix these issues all at once.
This would work because it would allow for a temporary solution while Sunnyslope’s administration works on getting money and time for a permanent fix.
It would also let students have more time to eat by spreading out the total number of students into thirds.
That would make the lunch lines shorter, allow more seating to be available, and maybe even make it possible for counselors to alter schedules, letting friends swap into the same lunch period as each other.
Sophomore Quinn Pradhan stated, “I think spreading out students into three lunches would work well, because the lines are long and slow.”
Students also said a third lunch period would not only help them be able to eat in time, but it could also ease the strain on the cafeteria’s staff.
Overcrowding would stress the cafeteria staff, making them work faster due to the large number of students wanting lunch.
Sophomore Erik Calderon remarked, “Going through the line and seeing the crowd of people behind me just makes me feel bad for the cafeteria workers who have to deal with that every day.”
However, Assistant Principal of Operations and Athletics Tim Matteson explained, “The cafeteria staff’s goal is actually to increase students’ participation in lunch, meaning the more students, the more the cafeteria staff is happy.”
Although the cafeteria is fine with the number of students, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other problems that a third lunch solves.
However, Matteson continued, “It’s possible that a third lunch period could make the experience better for students, but it’s unrealistic because adding a third lunch to the schedule would make classes shorter.”
It could be argued that sacrificing a bit of class time would be easy and a good solution, but Matteson also explained, “We’re set up for six class periods per day; if we added a third lunch period, we would have to add a seventh class period to balance times, which just wouldn’t work out,” saying that it’d be too difficult, and less so a temporary solution.
Even if students still argue that a third lunch would work out, the administration already has plans to fix the problems with lunch once they get the money for it, making a third lunch unnecessary.
“We’re planning to add ‘satellite’ areas on campus, basically extra zones for students to get lunch from, but without seating, to divide the students into three or more lunch lines, making getting lunch easier,” said Matteson.
Sunnyslope has also added a “cool zone” to the Viking Test Center in room B101, which helps students who don’t have a place to sit during their lunch periods, proving that Sunnyslope is working diligently to fix every lunch issue.
Matteson added, “We’re also trying to obtain more picnic tables to add to the K patio, a shaded area on campus for students to sit and eat.”
Since the school’s administration is determined to work towards solving the issues with lunch, Sunnyslope can only wait until they get the required funds to support the students and faculty during lunch periods.
In short, it is safe to say that the administration has lunch covered!