Recently, a group of SASPX juniors were sent to detention for ordering food on Monday. Jeffrey Park '22 lays out his opinion on the issue.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Echo.
Journalism
Before I formally start, I would like to take a moment to appreciate what The Echo is doing. By allowing controversial conversations to be discussed, our school, both students and the admins, will benefit. If this, however, is censored by the school and any “higher power,” it would be a time where we reflect if the system is correct as journalism is THE method to ensure that the power is in check.
Detention
First and foremost, I am not here to justify those that have broken the rules. Rules were broken, and we all knew the repercussions to it. For many of us, the risk outweighs the potential consequence, so we have done what we have done. Of all the classes at SAS, excluding the seniors with their privileges, juniors were the majority to receive a detention from this Order Scandal (I will refer to this event as OS from now on). Why are all the Juniors being called out for detention when freshman and sophomores do the same? I think that, and this is totally my personal reasoning with little to no evidence to back this up, the school is trying to make a statement by targeting the juniors to show the underclassman that they should not order. Previously, the juniors did not clean up after themselves in the commons, the school warned us first and then punished us as they saw fit, which is fair because we were warned, but we still messed up after the warning. For OS, however, Mr. Mimnaugh had sent out an email on 14:44 on Monday, April 26th, yet those that had ordered on Monday lunch, which would have been before the time when the message was sent out, had been called into detention. Thus, those that have been called in for detention for ordering on Monday, did not get a fair warning. Obviously, those that have ordered on Tuesday and have gotten caught do not have the same excuse.
Speaking of punishments, since when and where is it in the school policy that students cannot order food from outside? And if it is not in the rulebook, are we allowed to be punished? But Jeffrey, it doesn’t say you can’t kill someone in the handbook. Does that mean you can kill people in SAS? Whoever, thought about that, me, has no logical thinking. Obviously, THE LAW and common sense apply in our school. But if the school wants to talk about unwritten rules, that is a different story. This issue that I have with the idea of unwritten rules is that the school has shown little to no respect to this notion. If the school respected the unwritten rule, there should be a senior lounge/upperclassman lounge, letterman jackets should only be sold to seniors and those who have been varsity players since freshman year, and we should have at least three urinals in the male bathrooms (seriously). As there has never been respect for the unwritten rule and no appearance in the school handbook, there is no justification for why the school has suddenly punished the students.
Food at SAS
Food at SAS is horrendous. You may call me spoiled, but honestly who isn’t at SAS. LOOK AT THE AMOUNT OF FOOD THAT IS THROWN AWAY EVERY DAY. This is a sign, ADMINS. This is a sign. If people are not finishing certain dishes, please ditch that dish and make better ones. BeVital is honestly the most hit-or-miss cuisine. Sometimes it’s the best dish, beating BeGlobal, but sometimes I would not feed it to my dog if I had one. Now, it’s time to set our emotions aside and be rational here. I have 4 issues with food at SAS.
1. Eating at 13:00 is not healthy. Why are we eating lunch at 1? We literally changed our school schedule from 8:15 to 8, but we can’t reschedule our lunchtime? Why does it matter when middle schoolers are having lunch? Period 3 is by far the least productive class throughout the year for both teachers and students. We are all hungry. We need to get our lunchtime closer to 12 or even 11.
2. The lines are too long. If I am going to get pre-made food, I want it to be like McDonald’s, not the fat and oily part, the fast part. The entire purpose of pre-made food is to make sure that food is served fast, but why am I getting to my club at 13:20 and starting to get eat (again, that’s way too late to be eating). There are three solutions in which this can be changed. Firstly, package food so it is like Family Mart, grab, pay, go. Or the second option, grab and go. We already pay too much for school tuition, so why isn’t lunch included, or at least why don’t they pretend that lunch is covered (we all know the marketing strategies)? We aren’t at SAS because it is the “cheaper” school. Including a lunch fee will not be a big difference. By reducing the time where students have to take their lunch cards out and pay for food takes soooo long that I’ve missed an entire meeting before, which is not something that could have been “planned ahead” (this is a literal quote by one of the admins). Third solution: make lunchtime different for upper and underclassmen. Let's say there are 120 students per class, multiply that by 3, assuming all the seniors are enjoying their lunch. That means there are 360 students in the cafeteria. Minus the 10 students that bought all the pre-made sandwiches at the Kiosk. 350 students lining up for 6 cuisines. That is 54 students per cuisine. Say it takes the ayis 30 seconds to give us the food with the extra 10 seconds to pay, which is 36 minutes if you are at the back of the line. This is assuming the food doesn’t run out, which happens way too often. Also, our lunch is only 45 minutes. Let's say it takes 5 minutes to walk from our classroom back and forth, we would be having 4 minutes to eat. That is not acceptable.
3. Revisiting the idea that school food quality is too low. If people are throwing food out, don’t serve that dish again. The school and Sodexo (yea Sodexo, this one is on you) should be gathering data to understand what we like eating and prepare more of that food when it is in the cycle. Without the effort that you guys put in, you cannot blame the students for opting out of other solutions.
Last but not least 4, all the food at SAS is overpriced. I’m starting to think that Ms. Yuen’s little store has been shut down not by the Chinese government, but our school admin because her business was booming (keep in mind that the money received was for charity and that this is, again, my personal conspiracy theory). Take for example the hot chocolate. I cannot be the only one that still drinks hot chocolate, but it is 24 RMB and that’s the default unless you ask for a smaller size (now that is smart marketing). But for that price, I could be getting Starbucks. Orange juice at SAS, a bottle of store-bought orange juice is 15 RMB, where I can grab a bigger and better 6 RMB orange juice from Family Mart. Popcorn chicken is what? 15 RMB as well? The same price at Tubes and you already know who wins. I mentioned that we were spoiled, but we aren’t economically blind. And it’s not even all about economics and money, we students just don’t have the incentive to eat school food. If the school insists that we do eat school food, they better give students the incentive to do so. Although the school will do absolutely nothing after reading this as they do not have a motive to change, if the school enjoys wasting their valuable time re-watching security footages, sending admins to the gates, giving assigning students to detention, and making our school look bad with all the detention that they are giving, the school should do something about OS because it would be the right thing to do.
Thank you.
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