Caption: While they can be useful in many cases, several lockers around the school remain unused. This is for a variety of reasons, including inconvenient location and incorrect lock combinations.
Photo Credit: Sadie Tresnit
As many students already know, the lockers at Franklin can be confusing. For instance, although you might expect lockers to be assigned alphabetically, they regrettably are not. Moreover, school lockers are often nowhere near students’ classes, forcing them to go out of their way if they want to store anything. When I began this article, I fully intended to express my thoughts that lockers were becoming useless. However, finals week struck, and I found myself depending on my own mini personal storage unit for textbooks, notebooks, folders, and everything else I needed. I’ve changed my thinking, and I now believe that while lockers are useful, Franklin’s current system needs serious improvement.
First of all, many students have had problems with their lockers since the beginning of the year and haven’t been able to remedy them. One such student, Norah Bean (10), has never been able to open her locker. “I think I got the wrong combination because I have tried to open it several times and it just won’t open. I’ve also had my friends try to open it,” she said. Nothing has worked. At the beginning of the year, Bean confirmed with a staff member that she was trying to open the correct locker. Since then, she has not tried to get help. “I know I should, but I honestly don’t really have a need to use my locker every day,” demonstrating two things: that lockers can be inconvenient for students, and that help can be hard to find.
Jade Zenor-Halonen (11) was never given a locker at all, which has been a huge inconvenience. “It is my junior year, and having this be a year where people have a lot of work and tests, that also means a lot of books,” she says. “Knowing that our school is new, and the district knows how many kids go to our school, I think they did a poor job planning for that.” Others share her sentiment, agreeing that the school should have ensured that every student would have access to a locker.
Despite the numerous issues, several students still rely on their lockers to lighten their load throughout the day. “I think that my locker is really useful because without it, my back would fall off. So yes, I do use my locker and I find it very helpful,” says Mira Kron (10). Many classes at Franklin use textbooks, which can give students an enormous load to carry. In situations like this, lockers are very useful to those who have them. While they’re seemingly not becoming obsolete, our school definitely needs to make some changes.
One way Franklin could improve its locker system is by making sure students know what to do and who to talk to when they have problems with their lockers. Many students with whom I’ve spoken have admitted that they wouldn’t know what to do in the event of a locker issue. In order to make sure all students who need one have a locker, the school could have pupils submit a form requesting one. This would ensure that lockers wouldn’t go unused, and no one with would have to go without one simply because Franklin doesn’t have a locker for every student. All in all, I think that school lockers are mostly helpful, but their usefulness could drastically increase with the implementation of these policies.
