You just couldn’t finish your fruity pebbles fast enough and now sitting in a silent lunch detention, you stare around at the expressionless faces of classmates serving for a similar offense. No intellectual or educational conversations occur, little to no homework is actually done, and the next day repeats the same with often reoccurring faces. Bored, time wasted, lesson not learned, and laughed off as a waste of your precious lunchtime. There are two very divided sides to this issue: one being the administration that must discipline students for not coming to class on time, lunch detentions being an age-old form of reprimanding students. The other, students, who feel this form of punishment is for being a mere two minutes late to class, is wasting their time in a long school day full of already monotonous requirements.

“You just sit, eat, and don’t learn anything,” said Sultan Livingston (12), “I texted for most of it” explained Katie Rongey (12). Is there a punishment more fitting to the crime?  Should students take this more seriously, or is it as simple as stricter punishments?

One option would be any time students are late for class; they must make up the time in that class after school. This would give students the chance to make up the work they missed and get the added punishment of not going home at 2:30. Though this could help the student side, most teachers would not want to stay late everyday, just because you weren’t on time when your supposed to be.

When asked what a more fitting punishment would be, junior Katie Kemp said, “ Have them clean the lunch tables.”

Another idea would be to require an assignment to be done during this period, an idea few students would be fond of. Lastly the study hall aspect of this hour could be used a little wiser, either through students’ own initiative or teacher insistence.

Though I would never trust to eat off student cleaned tables, a more creative and functional lesson may be needed to get across the message: to get to class on time. We come here to learn, and you may feel wandering the halls and talking an extra five minutes to friends is educational, but the administration disagrees. For now, lunch detentions are here to stay so get to class on time, because, in the end, isn’t that why we get up at 6 AM? To learn? Oh that’s right you got up at 8:30 and have lunch detentions, to each his own.