This school year is introducing new changes. For example, the hallways are closed off, limiting the amount of space for all the students to roam around during Power Lunch. 

Liberty’s principal, Dr. Nelson explains why the decision was made to close off the hallways. 

“We have over 1,700 students and we were getting into situations, you know with fighting and kids making messes.” Nelson said.

With all the issues going on last year with fights, vaping in the bathroom and vandalism, there was a multitude of reasons to close the hallways down.  

The only way you can get in the hallways is if you need to see a teacher during office hours. The office hours are very different this year as well. If you want to visit a teacher during the office hours, you have to stay in the room the entire 30 minutes of that lunch block. They also aren’t in their classrooms, all teachers that teach the same subject are all in one classroom, so you have to find where your teacher will be that day.

When the hallways were open last year, there was very little supervision. Nelson says sometimes there were stairwells that weren’t even supervised.

“I say the most problematic area for us is the stairwells, we’re spread thin with supervision.”

He also said, “We cut the areas at least in half, so what’s going to happen? It’s going to be more packed.” 

Sophomore Austin Koehnemann said that she doesn’t care for the hallways being closed.

“I understand they closed the hallways down for multiple reasons and especially for kids doing things they shouldn’t be doing and they can’t have eyes on everyone and everything when those things happen or are happening,” Koehnemann said. “I personally liked the hallways and we had more space and room to sit. I don’t like how crowded it is at lunch now because everyone’s in the same area basically and since we have even more students this year that part just didn’t really make sense to me.”