Hallways Are Too Constricted

Hallways around the school are notoriously crowded and disorderly, especially between classes and breaks in school. This problem is created by people traveling in slow-moving horizontal lines or huddled in pods, which makes navigating the hallways impossible.

These problems may seem miniscule, but it can be vital to a student trying to make it to class on time.

Dimond Senior Joe Tung said, “I think it’s fine as long as people don’t walk side by side like in the opening of “Law and Order”.

Unfortunately, that is often the case. Students aren’t able to move throughout the hallways freely, creating bottlenecks and obstacles for other students who are trying to make it to class.

Everyone notices this problem, but how can we fix it?

Colter Deville, a senior, suggest that hallways be made wider.

Perhaps some lockers could be removed from the bottle necking areas, but this is something that doesn’t seem very feasible.

Other ideas are enforcing more rules in the hallways, creating “traffic patterns,” or shortening passing periods to give students an incentive to walk faster.

More rules in the hallways could create more confusion and disorder than there already is.

Tung simply doesn’t believe it is possible “I don’t know how they could enforce rules in the hallways.”

This is a valid point, as the security staff at Dimond are more focused on other issues such as dress code and behavior.

Students far outnumber them, and it would be almost impossible to catch anyone.

Plus, a set of rules and standards would have to be created so that both administration and teachers learn the rules.

Shortening the time between passing periods would cause chaos and many other difficulties for those trying to make it to their next class. People would be running and papers would be flying everywhere.

On top of that, student safety is very important and if everyone was running to their next class, and we would not be able to stop people from being trampled. Thus this method would be very ineffective.

Using the hallways in a “traffic pattern” seems like it would be a very effective way of moving students in between classes.

“Yes, everyone should use the hallways like a road,” said Deville.

To achieve this we would have to paint lines on the floor and teach students how they should properly walk around the halls.

This seems like it would work, but would any of the administration really put enough work into making this happen?

Hallways will always be over populated unless the population of Dimond decreases.

We could find a way to make more room in the hallways, or start to teach students a structured way to walk through them.

Unfortunately, both of these would take the administrators time and taxpayer money, so it seems like it should be possible to decrease crowding in the halls to increase students comfort.

But without a substantial change both socially and to the school itself, we likely will never see any real change.