By Jasmine Liu’26 and Vanessa Leung’25
Imagine yourself sitting in the middle of your class, listening to your peers during class discussions. However, your stomach has a mind of its own, and your eyes occasionally drift off to the clock in the corner of the room, counting down the minutes until lunch. Once the minute hand hits the twenty-minute mark, your teacher wraps up the class and everybody scrambles to put away their textbooks and notes. Eager to get to lunch, you spring out of your seat and stride towards the dining hall.
Alas, upon approaching the dining hall, you spot the horde of students standing in an endless line, growing longer every second! Your heart drops, and your stomach grumbles,but you push the thoughts down and hop in the line. You try to be patient as you slowly inch your way to the kitchen, but then panic sets in when you remember that you have less than thirty-five minutes to get your food, eat, and get to class.
The scenario above may seem familiar to many. In fact, this is a common phenomenon at St. Mark’s. Everyday, all students have lunch within the same thirty to thirty-five minute time period. As a result, there is always an endless line to the servery, and many students end up having only five to ten minutes to eat before their next class begins.
This issue caused many complaints from members of the St. Mark’s community. Some even raise safety concerns: with people and backpacks crowding the main hallway, students might trip and fall. Therefore, the interim assistant head of school, Ms. Morgan, and other faculty members, are working with the FLIK staff to arrange the dining hall times and accommodate for split lunch. Starting from October 13th, St. Mark’s School has been implementing this meal schedule every day.
This is not the first time that St. Mark’s uses the split lunch schedule. Last year, after deciding to reopen St. Mark’s for in-person learning for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, the school took away the X-Block time and created a split lunch schedule to discourage crowding and virus-spreading.
This year, after a whole school year of wearing masks and split lunches, St. Mark’s School decided to resume the pre-pandemic schedule by reinstalling X-Blocks and seated meals by advisory. However, the school failed to consider one aspect: the expanding student body. Now that more students share the same dining hall, it has become increasingly difficult to get lunch in the same short half hour period with the excess crowding and longer lines. Subsequently, the split lunch schedule was installed back into place.
According to the split lunch schedule, half of the classes are split into Class A, the other half into Class B. Students in Class A have class first from 11:00 a.m - 12:20 noon and then eat in Lunch B afterwards from 12:25 - 12:55. Meanwhile, Class B students eat in Lunch A first from 11:00-11:30 then proceed to class from 11:35 - 12:55.
While there are not any significant advantages or disadvantages towards split lunch lunches, people have formed opinions and thoughts about the lunch schedule change.
One student noted that she likes split lunch because students “don’t have to wait as long, and the dining hall isn’t as crowded.” Another student gave the same remarks saying that they “like split lunch because the line isn’t as long.” Yet fewer people per lunch block also means fewer friends to sit with at lunch. Other students commented that they sometimes “cannot have lunch with [their] friends” and that “there is barely anyone in Lunch B and the food is mostly finished by then.” Some also consider 11 am to be too early of a time to eat lunch.
However, the feedback to the return of the split lunch schedule is quite positive overall. While the new split lunch schedule may have its fair share of cons, so far, it is generally proved to be a better alternative to the crowded and long lines from the previous lunch schedule. Thanks to Ms. Morgan and the FLIK staff, it seems that for now, we can finally put some of the overcrowding and lunch rush issues behind us; hopefully, split lunch is here to stay.