If you are like me, you have been enjoying the luxuries of warm weather lately. Spending time outdoors, biking to school, and being able to enjoy lunch without being crammed against a sea of other students. However, the cafeteria is not always so sparsely populated. Anybody who has gone to this school for more than a year will tell you that as the seasons change, more and more people would rather enjoy lunch in the warmth of the school than to brave the Colorado winter weather. This leads to many occurrences of less than comfortable days as all of the Boulder High students huddle in the cafeteria together. In past years it was only occasionally when this was a confining situation, but this year this phenomenon of cafeteria-crowding may become far more common.
As many students know, Boulder High School is showing its age and struggling with overcapacity. The current Boulder High building traces its roots back to 1933, when Boulder had a population of only around 32,000 people (now it’s 104,000). Today’s building was originally designed for a much smaller student population, which contributes to many of the problems that we face today, such as an inadequate cafeteria for such a large number of students.
Currently, Boulder High is dealing with a particularly pronounced case of overcrowding that you may have noticed in your classes yourself. Right now the student population stands at a record high of 2200 students, a significant increase from the 2000 students enrolled in 2008. The strain on the school cafeteria becomes clear when it has to serve an entire lunch period worth of students, and the general consensus of Boulder High students reflects this. In a recent poll of returning Boulder High School students, it was found that 66% of them felt that school lunch lines are too long or that there are too many people in the cafeteria this year. This goes to show that although this was an existing problem for Boulder High School, this year it may be particularly exasperating for students expecting a pleasant cafeteria experience.
The school has recently implemented a free lunch program similar to the one we had in the 2021-2022 school year that grants all students of Boulder High School access to school lunch in the cafeteria for free. This has led to a significant uptick of people opting for school lunches, with 57.4% of students indicating that they will now more frequently eat school lunch in the cafeteria. This influx of students means that we can anticipate an increase in the congestion of the cafeteria.
However, there is more to this issue. Boulder High’s new school schedule has designated only one relatively short window of time during Thursday to eat lunch. The consequences of having all 2,200 students at Boulder High School need to eat lunch at the exact same time will be unprecedented as the weather cools. During the winter, students will be packed into the cafeteria and overflowing into other places in the school, all hiding from the cold while obtaining the sustenance to last them through the school day.
This is why I am currently grateful for all the extra space in the cafeteria and the ability to go anywhere during lunch in the warm, summery weather. Lunch is a very enjoyable experience in this part of the school year, and while we may wish it would stay that way forever, it will only be a couple of months before the winter weather will force the students of this school into the more spartan conditions of an over capacitated cafeteria. Until then, enjoy the freedom and leisure of these warm days.
