A forty-five minute lunch, promised to us  in exchange for a better attendance record. Sounds like a pretty nice deal, right? It’s almost convincing enough to cover up the corruption behind the ordeal in the first place. Almost, but not quite.

Two years ago, the idea of a forty-five minute lunch was implemented, with a release time of 2:45 to compensate for our extra time. Before then, the release time had been ten minutes earlier, and our lunches failed to subsist.

As of this school year, our lengthened lunch has been stripped from our schedule, and our time to eat has been crippled. Previously, this may not have been as big of a deal. Unfortunately for us, the enormous size of the freshman class this year has done well to devastate our time in the cafeteria, and create lines that make you physically older by the time you’ve left.

This, combined with the excess amount of students forced to stay behind at the school due to their new inability to eat fast food, leaves us with a major surplus of hungry students who are forced to find a little breathing room in the cafeteria. It becomes apparent that the time allocated to the number of students just isn’t enough.

That’s not where the corruption begins, however. After the removal of our longer lunch, the release time of 2:45 remained, which had only been put into effect for compensation. This left us with moronic new release times for other classes, such as 9:02, and 10:29. All this succeeds in doing is creating a confusing schedule, and an irritated student populace.

After the completion of semester one with a short lunch, the North High administration came out with an ultimatum. The dust has somewhat settled, and North High has begun their attempt at turning a longer lunch into positive reinforcement. This might be all well and good for the freshman who weren’t around to remember previous privileges, but everyone else knows just how pathetic this is.

What we are in fact being given, is negative reinforcement that was poorly disguised as a reward. Until our release time is pulled back to a time more reasonable than 2:45, this “reward” is nothing but privileges we are already paying for with our time.

So what are we left with? A school administration that cut us down from the knees, and offered to help us back up in exchange for school wide changes.

The results will be very reflective of this; a promise to give us what we had already had before is the idea of inexperienced authority. It’s obvious that because of the loss of principal Matt Smith, North lost its ability to compromise.