WOODBURY– “I just want to enjoy my food in peace.” 

When you think of lunch, you would normally think of enjoying a meal and sitting back and taking a break. 

A break from academic pressure.

A break from the social world. 

A break from the noise. 

But at NHS when you try to relax and enjoy your food during lunch time, there is always that one group during lunch that thinks it recess time. 

Before the school’s renovations that ended in 2020, the lunch room was roughly ⅓ bigger than it is now. Though the new lunch room is clean and better put together, why did we make it smaller knowing the school gets multiple out of district kids on top of district kids. Making the lunch room now the ultimate crazy house, when it is supposed to be a time to mentally and physically recuperate. 

“With the lunch room being smaller than it was before is definitely a challenge when it comes to controlling the noise,” Ellen Bruce, NHS’s hall monitor commented. “A lot of kids tend to leave lunch to go to the LMC to escape the noise, I personally very much dislike the set up and space of this new lunch room.” 

I went down to the lunch room during wave three just to see how loud it is. It turns out my headache was not from stress but from the obnoxious blabber coming from kids mouths, precisely 1358 Hz. 

Fun fact: this is the same amount of Hz that comes from a Subway station. 

As a student that thrives on some quiet, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. 

“I feel like a bird, I hear the loud noise from the cafe and in a second I fly upstairs to the LMC,” Gabby DiStefano, a NHS senior said. 

There needs to be a sterner take on how loud it is in the cafe. It is absurd that one group of obnoxious boys gets to constantly take away from what is supposed to be a calm and reviving lunch from others. 

An even sadder take on this is the cafeteria staff. Imagine going to work, spending all morning in a room so quiet you could hear a pin drop…to a circus coming into the cafe disturbing the peace for a whole 90 mins every day, the kind of noise that can drive a person insane. 

“We understand this is an environment for the student body to blow off some steam and socialize with peers before returning to the grind of the classroom,” said Costa Lefkimiatis, NHS Cafeteria Food Manager, “But it’s only when the cafeteria empties out that we notice the change in the noise level.”

Not only does this deafening noise affect everyone in the cafe, but it also affects guidance, library teachers, and any other teachers students go to for refuge. This cafe noise is not just a cafe problem, it is a school issue. 

“There are many students leaving lunch to come to my office, or another guidance teacher,” Christopher Maclean, NHS’s head of guidance said. “I’ve been told by a handful of students that they don’t enjoy lunch because of the noise, it is overwhelming sometimes with how many students come during the lunch waves.” 

Clearly the absurd noise in the cafe is a problem, so why is it not fixed. I think it is partly because there is not enough staff and the kids would overpower the teachers. But also how can you control the lunch monsters? What if that is their way of rewinding? Maybe the NHS needs a recess time.

There are so many ways we can fix this but doing nothing is not an answer. 

Nonnewaug High School students deserve to have a place to relax and go before going back to class– refreshed. The crippling headaches and obnoxious stress that comes from lunch needs to stop. Specific groups of students need to learn to put more food in their mouths in place of the noise coming out of it.

I, just like the overwhelming majority of students on campus, just want to enjoy my food…in peace.