Open campus lunches in high school are meant to give the students more freedom during the school day. In a lot of ways, open campus lunches would teach the students responsibility, while providing them a break from their busy school day. This also offers a reward for high-performing students. Not only would switching to open campus lunch benefit the students, but it would also benefit the local businesses within close proximity of the school campu.  If the privilege of open campus lunches were given to the high-performing students that follow the honor code, it could teach our students valuable lessons for the future.

If students were given the opportunity to have open campus lunch it would teach them that trust is easy to lose but hard to gain. The administrators and staff within the high school would be giving a lot of trust to students to abide by the honor code. At the end of the day, the open campus would be a privilege, if the staff does not trust certain students based on their actions in the past or their grades then they should have a right to revoke this privilege at any time. Trust would be a major key to making open campus lunches work. The staff will have to trust that the students would be well mannered and follow the guidelines set by the administration.

Another major key to starting open campus lunches is responsibility within the students. The students have to be responsible and mature enough to make the decision on if the should participate in open campus lunch or not. If a student makes the decision to leave campus for lunch they need to make sure that they return back within a timely matter to get to their next class by the late bell. Students will also have to be responsible for their actions during lunch time and make good decisions during their free time. Applying open campus lunches to our school lunchtime could be a big learning curve for our students.  

The benefits of open campus lunches are endless. Overall, applying this to our school lunches could save not only the families money, but also the school a little bit of money also. Since the student will be able to go off of campus for lunch, less money will have to be sent on providing lunch for the students. The school would not have to buy as much produce to make the lunch based on the fact that they would have fewer mouths to feed. This could also help the families who are trying to save money because they do not have to provide their children with money to buy their lunches when they could eat lunch from the comfort of their house.

Open campus lunches would also give the students a break from the school that they very need to alleviate the stress that is created from school work. This can give them a chance to leave the stuffy building of the school, “be able to just hang wherever with your friends and not be crammed in a loud lunchroom” says Kayla Mustafa, a sophomore at UHS, or “even spend time with your family” says Sarah Ferrante, sister to Alyssa Ferrante. This could all be an opportunity for students to stay on campus and complete work for school. Students could receive tutoring if they would like, catch up on work that they missed, or even get ahead on school work. Students would have to make the decision on whether they would remain on campus or leave the campus, but lunchtime could also turn in a memorable and productive time. At UHS I believe that with our staff and students we could definitely allow open campus lunches during our lunch shifts. The majority of our students are hardworking, smart, and responsible. I am sure that if certain rules were set our students would gladly follow them for a little bit of free time in their stressful day. I am sure that the students would be on board if you presented this idea to them. Joshua DiGiorgio, a junior at UHS says that“I think open campus lunches given the current thirty-minute lunch blocks isn’t practical. However, if the lunchtime was increased and or a subsequent break was added in; then I think open campus lunches would make sense giving students more choices.” What Joshua said was very true, but by changing these couple of things could lead to a monumental event within our school.