As students returned, they were met with a multitude of seemingly unimportant alterations. Although intermixed freshmen lunches, digital clocks, a new bell and PA system, cheaper parking passes, and the new homeroom system seem individually insignificant, when added up, they create a multitude of annoying shifts, especially for upperclassmen.

To begin a dive into the long list of alterations is to firstly touch on the freshman class that now has open campus lunch. Beyond that, freshmen are now intermixed with the other three grade levels and students are divided amongst two lunches. As a senior with a freshman for a sister, as many upperclassmen can relate, it was relieving to assume that the freshman lunch was still segregated. That is, of course, until lunch assignments were released. The intermingling of all four grade levels between two lunches has caused the O and F rooms to be extremely crowded and chaotic, especially within the first few weeks. Apparently administration thought it would be a good idea to have us ‘mentor’ freshmen and provide a model of behavior, but nobody asked us about this!

Not only was the lunch arrangement disappointing, but the newly installed clocks also have left returning students annoyed. The harsh red digits have left some students distraught, as endlessly staring into the minute hand of the analog clocks usually allowed students some psychic relief during a long day, as opposed to life on the Red Planet. Not far off the topic of the clocks is that of the new bells. The bells are much quieter and sometimes difficult to hear unless you’re in a quiet class or outside the building (where, on the contrary, the bells seem to be obnoxiously loud). This is especially inconvenient as many classes become somewhat reckless in the minutes leading up to the bell, and therefore they need to be heard over the chaos.

All of this pales when compared to the ongoing issue with the PA system. As mentioned previously, the same issue with speaker volume in proportion to the volume of classes makes it difficult to catch what Sydney has to say. Not only that, but the announcements have been continuously cut out in the middle of the script, random noises and flashes have emitted from them, and the hallway system is much clearer than those within classrooms. Despite the pleading of homeroom teachers, students rarely pay attention to the announcements as is, let alone when they can only be heard from the hallway.

That offers a nifty transition to another subject, homeroom. The class of 2022 is the last to have had the same homeroom teacher for longer than one school year. The system used to be that West’s students were assigned the same homeroom teacher for what was supposed to be the full four years. Alas, another pre-covid system has been reworked. This year, students were supposedly assigned their third hour teacher for homeroom, but the keyword is most. Many students ended up in oddball homerooms during their first week of school due to mixups and schedule changes, thus causing a few attendance issues in the first weeks.

Speaking of attendance, the ability to make it to class is often dependent on how students get to school. A majority of students that drive themselves purchase a parking pass, which is a staple of the beginning of the school year. Despite most of the alterations made to the West experience being somewhat annoying, this happens to be the mainly positive alteration: parking passes have been lowered to $45 from $75 in years prior. As of last year, parking passes were free due to the major percentage of school being attended from home, alongside the determination of students, many of whom pay for their passes out of their own pockets. Self transportation would seem to be the best choice as the bus system appears to be incapable of meeting scheduling deadlines. Have the secretaries just prerecorded “First hour teachers, we have a late bus” announcement yet? If not, they should be getting paid overtime.

In a nutshell, besides some of the expensive and more beneficial changes such as the new tennis courts and the roof work, West has also managed to achieve a multitude of seemingly unnecessary alterations to the average school day. These changes may feel insignificant to some, but not to the seniors that arrived September 1 expecting the familiar high school they started at.

By Hannah Roe

Oshkosh West Index Volume 118 Issue I

October 6th, 2021

Changes add tinge of frustration to ever present stress of academia