Hallway Traffic

By Richard Wilk

As I walk to and from classes, occasionally stopping by my locker, I feel nostalgic for the good ol’ days of my freshmen, sophomore, and junior years. I remember when I not only had time to stop by my locker for goodies between classes, but also to stop and fraternize with my friends. I could walk from one end of the building to the other within thirty seconds, unobstructed, except for the occasional people whom I would have to dodge. All of that has changed.

Now, a shroud of anger has fallen over my normally tranquil nature. It is a shroud in the form of too many people in too tight a space. I take two steps out of my classes and I hit a wall of people moving in the opposite direction of my next class. As I merge into this traffic I have to stop every other step in order not to run into the back of someone. As I discover a brief pocket of space, I stride quickly into the next wall of people only to discover that my speed didn’t matter because the people who were behind me, walking slower than a sloth moving up hill on a hot day, managed to catch up to me. It takes me over three minutes now to traverse the hallways and even more to stop at my locker. I am lucky if I make it into my classes twenty seconds before they start. I feel like I have to get an oil change, with all this stop and go walking. At least on a freeway you don’t have to deal with cross traffic!

But, what is the cause of this problem? It is obvious that there are just too many inconsiderate people jammed into too tight a space. There is nothing more annoying than finding a pack of people (by pack I mean 5 or more) standing in the middle of the hall discussing their insignificant lives. We have designated times to stop and talk, and that is NOT during the passing periods. The hall is not a private discussion chamber!

On top of the halls packed with pity mongers, we also have an outrageous amount of new freshmen at the school. They are like fleas, everywhere, small and annoying, and I cannot do anything about them! I would be happy if they were respectful and moved out of my way when walking, but no, that would be far too difficult for their puny intellects to comprehend. They are just too arrogant now-a-days, and they even consider themselves the equals of upper classmen! “I hate walking in the hall,” exclaims junior Stephen Pinkham, “there are just too many freshmen and idiots who stand there talking!” If the halls are this crowded with freshmen, I wonder about the class sizes. Maybe instead of revamping the school, we should spend the money to build a second high school, in order to accommodate the growing numbers of people invading the school system!

The lockers compound the congestion in the halls. It may have seemed like building the school with lockers was a good idea. It was not! They just augment the problem with hallway crowding. They give people a reason to stop in the halls. When people stop, their friends gather around them obstructing all the lockers around the person, which causes people to be forced to move around this growing crowd. When you have crowds on each side of the hallway congregating around lockers you get massive bottlenecks that cause massive amounts of traffic. Due to this problem, I barely have time to stop by my locker during the passing periods, and when I do manage to get to it, there is a group of people crowded around it making it impossible to get inside of it! The solution is to remove the lockers. Then people will have no reason to stop at all in the halls. It would not affect my life anyway, since I end up carrying all of my supplies and books anyway, due to my lack of ability to get to my locker.

This is a problem that must be dealt with. Another solution to this problem is to allow students their original outdoor pathways. Before construction where was more available space for students to meander between classes and dispersing the amount of people in the halls. But now everyone is forced to take the halls, which is making incredible congestion. On top of the people talking in the halls, a bunch of freshmen, and lockers ESHS has one massive problem.