CARS: Cars at Lunch: Crime or Comfort?

By Nathan Curtis,

HUB Correspondent–

 

Any Davis High students relaxing in their parked cars in the parking lot at lunch will be told to say sayonara to their sedans by a roaming campus supervisor.

Students aren’t allowed to spend lunch in their car under any circumstances, or else they will be asked to leave their car, even if they are just looking for a nice warm place to study, or a comfortable place to eat.

Staff members say that students are getting kicked out of their cars to prevent them from taking drugs in a secluded space.

“The principals are worried you might be doing bad things because they can’t see them [in the parking lot],” campus supervisor Richard Bruce said.  Bruce is the supervisor who has the duty of removing students from their cars at lunch.

Bruce says that on average, he removes people from five to 10 automotive vehicles parked in the parking lot per day.

“I have found people eating lunch, studying, talking with friends… but I have never caught anyone doing bad things,” Bruce said.

Many students enjoy spending lunch period in their car for many reasons. They can work on homework, listen to music, eat, take a nap, hang out with friends or even just enjoy themselves in a nice warm enclosed space. Junior Molly Aikawa is one of these students.

Aikawa enjoys sitting in her car because “It’s the only warm place other than classrooms we can eat in since we don’t have a cafeteria.”

Once, she was just sitting in her car hanging out with her friend and enjoying the car heater on a rainy day when she was spotted.  Aikawa just wanted to get out of the rain, but she didn’t feel like driving anywhere. She was immediately removed from her vehicle, leaving her and her friend “hurt” and “confused”.

“We didn’t know what to do after that,” Aikawa said. “It’s kinda like…they don’t trust us.”

Junior Trey Golston agrees. “It’s not like anything bad is happening in the car,” Golston said. “All it does is make us feel bad.”

The staff thinks that this rule will help prevent students take drugs at lunch, but there is one major hole in their reasoning.

“That’s crazy! Students can just drive a hundred feet [off campus] and do their drugs if they were that desperate,” sophomore Sachin Kumar said.

Mary Crawbuck is the journalism teacher at Foothill High School in Palo Cedro, California. When she heard about the Davis High lunch rule, her class had an entire discussion on the matter of spending lunch in their cars.

Foothill High School is a closed-campus school, which means that at lunch, students aren’t allowed to drive to leave school grounds. However, the students are allowed to enjoy lunchtime in their vehicles.

    “Students say that at Foothill it is common practice to sit in their cars at lunch,” Crawbuck said. “You can listen to music, it’s warm, it’s quiet and removed from people, and it’s a good place to study…  Going to your car is especially popular on rainy days when there are limited dry places to have lunch.”

The general consensus of Crawbuck’s class is that it is really nice going to their cars at lunch, and they are glad that they have the opportunity to do so, but students at Davis High don’t have this opportunity.

“It really is annoying that such a great place to hang [out] in is off limits,” sophomore Marquis Turner said. “Hopefully the rule will change.”