In years past, choosing lockers has been chaotic at best. On Orientation Day, seniors and juniors would make a dash for all the top lockers as soon as the high school was dismissed—some would even snatch the Post-it notes distinguishing an unclaimed locker before the meeting started.
This year, instead of all lockers being assigned on Orientation Day, the freshmen and seniors who attended Movie Night (which took place the Thursday before school started and was organized by Student Council) got first choice.
After the movie, members of Student Council took their pick. The procedure 0n Orientation Day stayed the same (seniors and juniors first; freshmen and sophomores second).
Not only did this new system decrease the chaos of the first day, but it also gave the seniors a larger selection of lockers to pick from and encouraged them to participate in Movie Night.
Nonetheless, somes seniors who didn’t go to Movie Night were stuck with undesirable bottom lockers in the senior locker area (facing the high-school quad).
The popular stance is to blame this on the junior Student Council members who chose senior-area lockers after Movie Night. However, Patricia Jacobsen, dean of student life, who headed locker assignment, said that there are still some unclaimed top lockers in the area.
So, really, the problem is that not all of the seniors were aware of which lockers were already taken. This seems to happen every year—there are always a couple empty top lockers somewhere.
Therefore, the issue lies in the Post-it notes that identify unclaimed lockers. They can easily be taken off by wind or students seeking to keep their options open.
So why use Post-its?
Why not instead have everyone line up by grade and tell Jacobsen which locker they want? It can even still be done by class—seniors and freshmen on Movie Night; leftover seniors and freshmen, juniors and sophomores on Orientation Day.
This process would be much fairer, as one can’t sneak by early to get a Post-it or grab a handful just to be safe. And, if someone ahead in line gets your first-choice locker, you can only blame yourself for not being fast enough.
And those busy seniors who couldn’t make it to Movie Night will still have pretty good choices.
There’s really no need to blame Student Council—they’ve made the locker process much more streamlined, even giving the seniors an advantage in the race.
And, let’s face it, Student Council members organize the majority of the events that make our year worth getting through. The least they deserve are decent lockers.
