The days of having the freedom to leave during lunch at UAHS are gone. At one point, students were allowed to choose to go home at lunch, go out, or simply just do whatever they wanted. However, things have changed and now students must remain in the Golden Bear Boulevard (GBB) during their lunch hour. 

UAHS has been getting increasingly strict in terms of freedom within the school. Last year, they shut down open lunch completely and introduced the E-Hall pass, but the pass wasn’t fully enforced. 

“It was a combination of E-hallpass and written passes. Teachers were getting used to it, and students were getting used to it,” Principal Andrew Theado said.    

However, this year, they are cracking down on the E-Hall pass and now locking certain doors in the building to keep students out of the academic hallways.​​​ 

Throughout the lunch hour, the gray doors separating the GBB and academic hallway are no longer being held open for students to walk through.​​ This can make it harder for students who try to pass others to get to classes faster. During the lunch hour, two doors on the northern and southern ends of the building are locked. In between lunches, they are unlocked for transition. The reason they remain locked now is because of the larger number of students– the schedule is switched to 8 periods, leaving two periods for lunch. Within each period, half of the students are going into lunch and the other half remain in the academic hallway. The doors are locked to keep the academic hallways clear of wandering students and to avoid the hallways from becoming loud and distracting the students who are in class. 

Although students seem to have adapted well to staying in school during lunch, the open lunch days seemed to be beneficial to some students. 

Students had the ability to leave the school during their lunch period at UAHS since the school was founded. Some students saw this as a time to go eat with friends, and some students saw open lunch as a need in their long days. The stress that comes with school is increasing by 58% in adolescents. Therefore, when students take advantage of open lunch, they then have the opportunity to reduce their stress levels by taking a break. 

“I was blessed for that short period of time to just leave the school and my anxiety behind while eating lunch,” former UAHS student Brooke DeWalt said.

Open lunch was a breath of fresh air for some students. 

“It was a time to walk away from what was happening in school and give yourself a break in order to be successful during the second half of the day,” DeWalt said.

The class of 2021 was the last graduating class to have open lunch for all four years. Any graduating class after 2021 never had open lunch privileges. Starting in 2022, doors remain locked during lunch for everyone. 

“I feel that for at least a year they should see how it works with the new school and give students that have not had the opportunity, the opportunity to have open lunch,” sophomore Jillian Vagnier said.