Students struggle to complete work in restricted space

Our study halls are there for us to be able to complete homework or do late work, though it’s difficult to do so when you have a study hall in the auditorium. There aren’t any proper tables, some seats have little ones, but you can’t even fit your whole Chromebook on them, you have to have everything either on your lap or the floor, and the seating is also very uncomfortable. Not only is the auditorium difficult to work in due to these reasons, but also because of how loud it can get, since there are three to four classes in the area at a time.

Senior Evan Sutton complains about ¨Having to balance all my books and classwork on the small tables. The floor is also very messy with random assortments of food.¨ If you have class in the auditorium you also aren’t allowed to sit anywhere else in the school, even the library. Why aren’t we allowed to use the library? That’s the question I want to explore and how we can create solutions to the problems at hand.

According to the librarians, our main two problems with the library are student behavior and spacing issues. In previous years many students come to the library to skip class or to meet up with friends to goof around. Though there was a minority of students causing problems, according to the librarians, a couple incidents happened, like students either staying there the whole block or going to the bathroom and not coming back, and kids would also do things such as jumping on tables and not respecting property.

This issue is easily solved, though. Those students who repeatedly abuse privileges should lose them and not be able to come to the library as freely. With the behavior problems the only solution is to create stricter rules. This could just be that if you’re being too loud after being told to quiet down, that you are sent back to your study hall. There should also be a limit. For example, there can be a limited number of passes made to the library at a time, or students could make appointments to come and work there.

Our other issue is the spacing problem. This applies to both students and teachers. Teachers use the library during their planning blocks, for meetings, and sometimes for lessons. The reason they do this is because there isn’t enough space anywhere else, but this can also take away the ability for students to come into the library. The spacing issue is probably the most difficult problem to solve since our school is overcrowded, but there is one possible solution.

Adding a second story to the library would help this problem. It would create more space for students and teachers to be able to do work and have meetings. This would also solve library acoustics, which is something that the librarians said was a problem. Instead of the whole library closing when there are events, they could only close one floor and allow students and teachers to use the other. It would also allow for us to add more to our library. We could add a meeting room and private study rooms that both students and teachers could use when they need to focus. For some students this would be very useful since it’s difficult for them to work when other people are around them and it’s loud.

Junior Charlotte Marland asks, “Why do we have a library if we cannot utilize it?”