Word on the street is that the school board is scheming to revoke the “open lunch” privileges of freshmen, sophomores and possibly even juniors and seniors.

     This would mean the end of mid-day excursions to popular fast-food restaurants. This would mean the end of a student’s option to venture home for the duration of their lunch hour.

     It is the opinion of the Budget staff that the “open lunch” is an LHS institution that must be preserved. Consider these points:

     As it is, the cafeteria is grossly overcrowded, packed with mobs of students — standing in line, eagerly awaiting their afternoon meals, or sitting at the tables, filling every available seat.

     With the addition of freshmen to the LHS mix next year, this situation will be worsened to an alarming degree. If the decision to strip students of their lunchtime freedom is ratified, the crowding problem will increase tenfold.

     If the open lunch ban does indeed go into effect, the school will have a difficult time attempting to enforce it. The main problem is that there would be no conceivable way to monitor each and every entrance and exit in the school. Even with the aid of security cameras, certain areas would inevitably go unmonitored, and even more problematically, there would be absolutely no way to ensure that the grainy figures on the screen are of the proper age to be leaving campus.

     At a minimum, juniors and seniors should be able to leave because they are of legal driving age. That said, we don’t appreciate school board members who would attempt to rob any students of their right to do what they want with their free time.