If you were to ask Carbondale students about the school lunch, the vast majority would not have good things to say. Now, if you asked graduates from 2014 or earlier the same question, they would have great things to say. Why is this? Well it’s because after the 2013/2014 school year CCHS got rid of the catering services in the cafeteria in compliance with new government regulations on school lunches. Now students are funneled into two slow moving lines to receive their mediocre lunch. This is not to disrespect our great cooks here at the school, they do a great job with what they’re working with. There are problems with the lunch at Carbondale High School that just can’t be fixed on campus, our cafeteria was not designed to have everyone in the school get their lunch from it.

The lunch lines can be brutal, senior Nathan Torres said, “Thankfully I have a close class before lunch, if I couldn’t get there before that line formed I would be waiting over half the period.” Some kids don’t even find it worth it to buy lunch because it would take so long just to get a tiny serving of food that almost never fills a person up.

How do we solve our horrible wait situation? Or our wild lack of seating in the cafeteria that makes everyone sit out in the halls? Well, we give students off campus lunch. The main argument against this is that students won’t come back, and I can’t say that’s incorrect, many kids probably wouldn’t. So maybe we only open it up to students who meet certain requirements, like a grade minimum or students under a certain amount of disciplinary referrals. Even with pretty strict requirements that only let the good kids off campus there would be more than enough people leaving to alleviate the stress on our cafeteria.