It’s 9:27 and students walk into the lunchroom looking for snack. As they approach the box filled with animal crackers, they find it’s empty.

For St. Paul Academy and Summit School students, this can be an everyday occurrence. With only enough snack put out for a fraction of the students, after a couple minutes into X-period it can all be gone. In order to combat this problem, Upper School Council has put cereal dispensers in the lunchroom during snack break.

“[We got cereal dispensers] for a few main reasons,” USC member Adnan Askari said. “The first reason was that a lot of the time, five minutes into snack, there would be nothing left, so we wanted something that would be available more often and that would have a higher capacity so that students could actually get access to snack.”

Before the dispensers were implemented, USC sent out a survey to students allowing them to vote on which cereals were their favorites. Using that data, USC was able to decide what types of cereal to provide.

The extra snack has been a hit so far among Upper School students, especially for senior Lauren Hansen.

“The cereal dispensers are awesome because now I never have to rush to the lunch room right at 9:25,” Hansen said.

Not only is the cereal great for creating snack for the whole community, but it also benefits the environment.

“It doesn’t create much trash, if any, because of the fact that there aren’t any wrappers or disposable parts so we can just compost the containers,” Askari said.