The Ben Davis cafeteria is constantly crowded. There are five periods for lunches and each runs 23 minutes long.

With roughly 600 students per lunch period, that leaves little time to eat and little time to move.

“We sit back-to-back in the chairs and it’s hard to pull them out without hitting someone,” junior Aneica King said. 

The cafeteria can hold up to 650 people. With 12 lunch lines open daily, that means about 55 students per line in order to keep everyone moving.

The senior seating in the commons was added four years ago and has helped spread the crowd somewhat. However, not everyone likes sitting in the cafeteria area.

“I sit in the teachers classroom most days because it is just too many people,” said junior Aynia Hasan, who eats fourth period. “Sometimes I won’t even get lunch because of how long I have to wait.” 

Some other places students are able to eat their lunch are the senior cafe, which from the name is only for seniors, the library, or another teacher’s classroom. There aren’t many options and students shouldn’t have to be forced to eat somewhere else because of the amount of people.

Junior Jacob Connors in period 4 gives a very interesting thought about what can be done to resolve this issue.

“To make the lines shorter and possibly quicker, students could go up by grade level so seniors, then juniors, then sophomores,” Connors said.

Until there is a change, patience is the best advice.