Written by: Manushri
Edited by: Li
Lockers. They’re the highlight of every movie situated in a high school; the quintessential backdrop to every teenager’s school dream. But are they truly efficient?
Prior to the beginning of each school year, bearcats perch on the edge of their seats giddy with anticipation of their schedules. As they read through the famed email, their fingertips aching to open the PDF of their schedule, they come across one hidden, seemingly insignificant line that reads: ‘Locker Distribution’. At ISM, all freshmen and sophomores are assigned lockers, while juniors and seniors are asked to make a special request to the High School Office to be granted access on a first come first served basis. Despite the fact that our lockers are simple to operate, and encrypted with the code of our ID card, students rarely access them. To build a better picture of whether or not lockers are helpful, we asked students from our ISM community for their input.
Siri, a junior, explains, “I never use lockers because they’re hard to access, and I find them inefficient because they’re so far away from my classes. The lockers are also small so it’s hard to store things, and sometimes they malfunction.” Mysha, a sophomore, echoes a similar sentiment, stating, “I believe the lockers are inefficient since the campus is so large my classes are all over the place: this combined with the small amount of time they give to switch between classes makes lockers almost useless except for holding sports gear which sometimes won’t even fit.”
The same opinion reverberates in the minds of other High School students. Kashyapi, a senior, believes, “Lockers aren’t that useful. They don’t have enough space to actually fit the stuff I wanna store. It’s also low-key really inconvenient for a senior to get a locker and their location is not ideal either so I don’t even bother. There’s not much time between classes to actually access them and that just takes away from their supposed utility.”
However, the contrary is true for middle schoolers. Seowoo, an 8th grader states: “I use my locker regularly because it’s easy to use and close in proximity to my classes.” The main reason for the chasm between Seowoo and Siri’s sentiments appears to be proximity; with High School classes being separated by subject as opposed to Middle School, lockers are situated on various floors and accessibility is inconvenient. Thus, despite lockers being highly convenient in theory, they translate to quite the opposite of the average High School experience. Moreover, as a junior who has been in high school for the past three years, I often find myself questioning the utility of lockers because of their relative remoteness. For instance, as a Freshman I was assigned a locker in the Physics hallway in which I did not have any scheduled classes. This led to a significant reduction in my usage of the locker which I seldom opened save for exams. Hence, in order to increase the efficiency of lockers, it is crucial to transform how they are assigned. For this to happen, careful deliberation needs to occur from the administration on where a student’s assigned locker will be located to ensure it benefits them and increases the efficiency of lockers to some degree. However, the main problem remains the dispersed nature of High School classes which cannot be combated unless the class organization is divided based on grade levels instead of by department. As a result, in the status quo, lockers transform into the forgotten backdrop of a faded teenage dream while high schoolers find themselves lugging around heavy backpacks on yet another Monday morning.
