“You have to walk where for your classes?” 

This question many of us hear when describing our day-to-day routine to people who don’t go to H-F.

The walk from North Building to South Building is something that makes our H-F experience unique, and not in a good way.

I know that we can’t change the fact that there’s a North and a South Building, but we can make our experience better by changing the time given to students to walk from one building to the other.

To begin, an 11-minute walk between classes can be long depending on your situation. If a student is tired from gym class or if they suffered a recent injury, the long walk across campus can be stressful.

 At one point in the school year, I was just becoming acclimated with the school and had to walk to the North building for the first time ever. However, I injured myself at cheer practice but still had to walk to my classes. Thus, throughout the day, I was still trying to tread lightly and not walk too hard or too fast.

Needless to say, I was moving slowly and was two minutes late for my next class.

The consequences were swift: I was marked tardy and was given a three-hour detention.

I understand that class needs to begin sometime and that people need to be present once the bell rings. Students could miss important information, we could miss out on learning if we’re distracted by late-comers and there are safety concerns. I don’t deny any of these facts.

However, extra time in the passing periods would give all students the opportunity to get to class on time and make all of these things come true. 

Most importantly, a longer passing period would fix the most stressful point in the day: trying to control the speed of those around you.

Traffic in the hallways is the biggest contributing factor to why H-F should make the passing periods longer.

There should be more time during the passing period to allow students who have medical or any other critical conditions to have more time to get to class especially if it’s an issue they can’t control or fix anytime soon.

So I say all of this to ask if we can at least get an extra two-minute grace period to get to class when traveling from South to North or the other way around because not only can we not control how fast or slow a person walks but we also can’t control traffic and at the end of that isn’t our fault as students. Not only is it not our fault but we shouldn’t automatically be penalized for being a minute or two late to class because of circumstances we couldn’t control. 

For instance, students who attended Parker or James Hart had to adjust to the high school environment. 

On top of incoming freshmen like myself have to adapt to not only a completely new environment but also had to adjust to traveling long distances between two buildings 

Not only are freshmen still getting used to high school itself and the different community they are adjusting to the time frame that’s given to get from the building for instance some freshmen and new transfers have a schedule that requires them to travel from north and south the entire day. 

Unfortunately, it is draining but it’s also straining our legs. So I feel as a student with injuries that we as a whole deserve at least an extra three minutes to get to class after the bell rings.