Danielle+Dutra's+Essay

Danielle Dutra December 10, 2008 Senior Seminar Senior Privileges Position Paper   For this project, our group is concerned over senior privileges. We feel like seniors should be able to leave the school campus to go to lunch. We also feel like as seniors, we don’t have enough privileges. Our only two privileges are to 1. Eat lunch in the spine and 2. To park in the senior lot if we get a spot. We feel like if were able to leave campus for lunch it would give us more responsibility and would give us more time to eat our lunch and socialize with friends.  Many seniors agree that being able to leave campus for lunch is a good idea. Mr. Lalli says that almost every year this idea is proposed, but so far it hasn’t been taken to the next level. The 4 lunch schedule has been set for about 5 to 6 years in the new school, before in the old building it was a 3 lunch schedule that gave students much more time to eat and socialize at lunch. While almost all seniors would be for this policy, most of the faculty seems up in the air. Many of the faculty that we interviewed said that safety is an issue and the school is liable for students during the school day.  The two major viewpoints that we encountered as we started to research this policy was that many faculty in our school were either 'for' our proposition or 'against' it. Mr. Foley seemed to like the idea that he seemed to welcome new ideas from the students about the changes //they// wanted in the school, while Mr. Lalli was not so enthusiastic about our proposal, to him the biggest concern was safety and the school being liable for the student during the school day. Even if students had parent permission to leave school grounds during lunch hours, the school would still be held responsible for the student if anything were to happen to them while they were outside school grounds. Generally, the idea was to keep the existing policy, because to them there was nothing to change.    My personal viewpoint on our proposal is that I am “for” seniors being able to leave for lunch. The school claims that they trust their students, but if they really trusted them they would at least let the seniors, who will be leaving soon any, leave for lunch; teaching us time management, and responsibility, two major traits that we will need long after high school. To challenge this, our group is focusing on changing this policy to allow seniors with cars to leave during lunches and return in time for their next class. For this to work, the lunch schedule will have to be changed back to a 3-lunch schedule, like how it was set up in the old school. Allowing seniors to leave for lunch would make more space in the lunch rooms and allow seniors to become more responsible.  In conclusion, I feel that our group will keep pushing towards seniors being able to leave school grounds for lunch. Even Mr. Kenyon agrees that seniors deserve more privileges, it makes more sense considering the fact that seniors only have one more left and most seniors are more mature then the underclassmen. And while the school pressures us with such things like the SAT, college applications, e-portfolio, senior exhibition, etc., shouldn’t we be able to just leave school for 30 minutes to eat lunch? 