The school year started off with students slowly settling into new routines, schedule, and structure during the day in silent halls absent of the sound of hundreds of lockers clicking throughout the school… because the majority of the spaces that used to house lockers are gone. The old science hallway (now general offices), the old math wing (now history department), and the college counseling areas have lost most if not all of the lockers that used to fill those hallways. The general lack of lockers in the building leaves many students without a spot in the school to claim as their own. Fortunately, students do not need lockers to succeed or stay organized: all the books a student has can be lugged all around the building.

Seniors Zach Tipler and Muriel Lang along with junior Elijah Johnson do not feel that a lack of lockers will pose a problem for them during the coming school year.

“I’ve never used one [a locker] before; it makes me keep my backpack organized,” Tipler said.

“I have a backpack so I don’t need a locker. I never really put anything in there anyway,” Johnson said.

“I have no locker and I only notice it when I bring a lunch or jacket with me to school. I don’t notice not having a locker because I bring my backpack with me to every class and its fine,” Lang said.

Students rarely used lockers in the first place, so not automatically getting one this year will not affect their daily school routine. Any inconvenience brought about by the lack of lockers will be near negligible at best. Students should ditch their lockers and find alternative ways to keep their belongs secure.

Lockers are not a necessity in everyday school life.

The choice of having lockers was an option that should’ve been utilized by more upper school students. Due to the construction of the Schilling Math and Science Center, locker space has become very limited to accommodate renovations. The administration gave the choice to students from 10th, 11th, and 12th grade to request a locker if they wanted it (9th graders were automatically assigned a locker). Students who chose to have lockers are in the minority, and those that didn’t get a locker made an error in doing so.

For starters, Minnesota is known to have famously cold winters. When the weather gets frigid, many students respond by bundling up with jackets, mittens, hats, and scarves. Fortunately enough for us, the school is kept warm during the winter and there is no need for those items in the building. Unfortunately enough, we need to find a place to keep all those clothes when we don’t need them. Those that don’t have a locker will be left struggling to find places to put all of their winter wear.

Especially for seniors, lockers have become a famous tradition in the college decision process. Once a senior has committed to their college of choice, they typically put up a banner they make in the college counseling office that has the name of the school on it. This serves as a source of school pride, but also lets their classmates and other members of the upper school know where they have chosen to continue their pursuit of knowledge. Now that many seniors don’t have lockers, there will be no place for the community to look at the colleges people have committed to, and no place for many seniors to display their school pride.

Finally, lockers allow for students to have a space to store hard-to-transport items, like heavy textbooks. Often, at the beginning of the year, teachers will request that students store texts in easy to access areas so that they can acquire it if they go back to that text suddenly. Also, teachers will tell their students that there is no need for students to bring their large textbooks to class due to their weight, but it is still nice to have that textbook live on campus for homework sessions during free periods and tutorials. Without a locker, students have no place to put these items for quick and easy access.

Having a locker is a positive choice that will make one’s upper school life easier and more stress-free, and it comes at no cost to the student.