Travis+Crocker+Position+Essay

Travis Crocker  My group was disturbed by the lack of privileges granted to seniors at our school. In our opinion four years of hard work in high school should be rewarded with more than the allowance to sit on a bench in a hallway and being granted a parking spot, which I may add is also a privilege enjoyed by members of the junior class. From the umbrella topic of granting senior privileges we selected to focus our attention upon allowing senior to enjoy an open campus, allowing them to leave the school ground for lunch. I feel that the many restriction our school places upon its senior population is retarding their development of crucial skill and senses they will be expected to have in the “real world”. For example in the college and career setting they will not be forced to remain in the work area during lunch hours, it will be their responsibility to, if they leave, return in time to continue their work. By not allowing senior to leave campus, we are preventing them from developing a sense of responsibility for their actions and when they fail to live up to these responsibilities in a career or college setting they will pay the price.  Our school has always practiced the closed campus system, never in the past have students been permitted to leave campus during school hours, with the exception of interns. As our school continues to grow the cafeteria becomes more and more crowded and thus the time required for lunch grows longer and longer while the time allowed remains unchanged. As a consequence students are rushed; especially those must stand in a long line to purchase their lunch. This current closed campus system is first depriving seniors of a privilege that I feel they have earned through years of academic toil and second is forcing students of all grade levels to sit in a crowded lunch room, stand in long lines, an scarf down a hasty meal this leaves precious little time for relaxation, something I feel that students and teenagers could use more of. According to an interview with Mr. Foley, the idea of practicing an open campus has been suggested in the past, but no major steps have been taken in that direction.  Upon interviewing four members of our school’s administration we discovered that we could classify three of them into two distinctly different opinions, and one was indecisive unwilling to commit to either side of the argument. The principal, Mr. Foley, and the athletic director, Mr. Kenyon both were at the very least supportive of the proposal of the idea of an open campus. Mr. Foley agreed with many of our arguments and confirmed that he would be willing to consider any proposal we could make if it was formalized. On the other side of the argument was the assistant principal Mr. Lalli was totally against our cause and said he could offer any support of it because he disagreed with it on principle, though our group members who interviewed him found his arguments rather confusing and completely unrelated I believe he will pose as a major roadblock and resister of our proposal. One of the other assistant principals Ms. Sironen was utterly indecisive, nothing she said led me to believe she was either for or against our proposal; she stated repeatedly that she would need to see a formal written proposal with all of our plans and argument laid out before she could make any decision. I could pick no leaning from any of her comments, there seemed to be an equal balance between negative and positive making impossible to classify her as an ally or opponent.  I believe that our research, though it showed us there will inevitably be opposition, shows that we have a valid and well based argument and position. That several higher ups among the school faculty and decision makers, mainly the principal seemed willing, if not eager to examine any proposal that we made, so long as it was realistic. I believe that the best lunch system would be and open campus divided into three lunches instead of four. This would allow senior to have the privilege to leave school for lunch as well as helping to ease the overcrowding problem by removing those students from the cafeteria and campus. This would help seniors to develop a sense of responsibility because if they failed to return to class on time, this privilege would be revoked. It could also help to bolster the local economy of Wickford. With students spending money in town shops and restaurants it would take money away from the big businesses that provide school lunch and support local small businesses improving the town’s economy if only slightly. Inevitably there will be kinks that must be worked out such as class time constraints and contract violations as far as time teachers must spend at school, and liability issues if a student is injured or arrested during school hours, but no new policy was ever implement smoothly.  I believe that the open campus system is perfectly reasonable, by no means do I argue its perfection, but I believe that the benefits of such a system outweigh the cons and risks. Our administrator agree that our senior lack any real privileges short of being given a bench, and the majority of them were willing to consider any formal finalized proposal we suggest. After considering a variety of possible systems I feel that an extended three section lunch period would be the most efficient and easiest to implement. This would allow students more time to enjoy down time during lunch to relax and recuperate and allow senior adequate time to go off campus for lunch. 