Printer-friendly versionIt happened again today. I was standing in the cafeteria when I heard the dreaded sound of yelling, chairs scraping the floor and students scurrying for cover coming from the other side of the room. Food fight. Ugh.
I rushed over to find french fries, ketchup and peaches everywhere and students complaining about another destroyed lunch.
“Why do they do this?” one girl asked of no one in particular as she scraped ketchup from her backpack.
Good question.
Our school has had a rash of these occurrences over the past year. Using the video surveillance system, we usually find the participants and issue consequences. Anyone found participating in a food fight is assigned lunch detention that includes clean-up duty. This measure was implemented after students complained that “nothing was being done” about the food fights.
The students had a point. It seemed to students that they were the only ones being impacted by the food fights and that the administrative team was looking the other way.
Although I’m not a fan of consequences that can embarrass students, clean-up duty is related to the transgression and other students could see that there was in fact a consequence. Plus, it gave our custodian some much-needed assistance.
The fact that the food fights continue to occur, much to the annoyance of the majority of our students (and all of the custodians), tells me that perhaps the administrative consequence isn’t the solution to the problem.
In our school 45 percent of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. Our state is one of the top five “hungriest” in the nation. And here are our students throwing food.
These are the same students who rally together to bring in tens of thousands of cans and boxes of food for local families in our community during our annual canned food drive. I’m thinking that the answer to this issue may need to come from the students themselves.
I shared these thoughts with a couple of our leadership students. The looks on their faces turned from anger to excitement.
“We need to do something about this,” exclaimed Nancy.
There was enthusiastic talk about assemblies and activities to help students make the connection between food waste and hunger.
I can’t wait to see what they come up with.
Ryan Fear is a high school dean of students in Oregon.
Comments
Prodigal students wasting
Prodigal students wasting valuable food need to be told the
plight of underprivileged starving sections of society and
how even a little loss of food can fill in bowels of the
hungry.If possible , the suffering of undernourished people
could be highlighted through video clips / documentaries /posters
etc.Waste not & want not !The problem of wastage of food & that
too by student community needs to be addressed in earnest by
all concerned.
Prof.(Mr.) Suhas Patwardhan
M.A. ( English literature, 1976 )
University of Bombay
Freelance Journalist
Mumbai , I N D I A.
I've found over the past 40
I've found over the past 40 years or so, that, despite most people's belief that they have no Biases/Prejudices...everyone does in some form or another. As for myself, I can tolerate differences in looks, lifestyles, cultures and much more. What I, regretfully, have found I have no tolerance for is: blatant stupidity (ignorance is fine), those who refuse to see the whole picture due to their preference to stay "blinders on", and most of all those who assume, just by the look of a thing/person/situation, that they know what the "real" issue is.
I hate to say it but, the General Population of the USA are happy being SHEEP! No one, in general, thinks for themselves anymore. It's so much easier to sit back and let someone else think "for you"...in other words, follow whatever the TV, radio and/or other means of Public Info Provider, than to take the time to look into it on your own so you can have a "educated", as opposed to an Ovine view, on issues you think may be important or don't fully comprehend.
Granted, there are those, like myself, who aren't sheep, but I'd be confident in saying that 90% or more of the General US Population are Ovine-like. (To prevent too much offense of some.)