Walking through the halls of Staples, one sees an endless stream of lockers. Although intended for storage of binders, textbooks, jackets, and athletic equipment, lockers have become mere decoration, as only a small portion of students actually use them. The majority of students opt to carry their academic world in a backpack clogging the cafeteria and the aisles of classrooms.
There are clear benefits to using a locker but just one big reason students don’t: inconvenience.
Kelly Harris ’13 doesn’t use her locker because it is on the third floor.
“I don’t even know what my locker number is or the combination,” she said. Harris and many students like her feel that their lockers are too far away from their classes.
Mehar Kirmani ’15 and Ben Hamer ’16 agree with Harris. They think that a majority of students in their classes don’t use their lockers due to the inconvenience; they don’t have time in between classes to stop by their locker to get supplies.
There are a few students who use their locker. Victoria Loiacono ’14 has a locker on the third floor, and even though most consider such a location inconvenient, she finds time to go to her locker during her free period or her study skills class.
“[I use my locker] because I have scoliosis, and I don’t want it to get worse by carrying a bunch of binders around,” Loiacono said.
Karyn Morgan, assistant principal for the freshman class, agrees with Loiacono, saying that she promotes the lockers because she doesn’t want to see students carrying around their heavy book bags, which can possibly hurt them with the heavy weight.
Similarly, Patrick Micinilio, assistant principal for the senior class, wants more students to use their lockers because he sees student’s backpacks in the cafeteria and doesn’t want them or the contents inside to get stolen.
Every Staples student gets assigned a numbered locker, but with the student population increasing, Micinilio said that the school will eventually have no more places to add lockers for incoming students.
In fact, currently the school has almost maxed out. There are 1,899 lockers for 1,883 students and eight of those lockers are reserved for special-needs students.
“We really have no other place to put the lockers,” said Micinilio about moving lockers from the third floor or moving them to central locations.
For students like Loiacono who need a place to put books, the third floor locker is a point of frustration, and she thinks something could be done.
Loiacono believes that if the administration would reassign lockers and distribute them by prioritizing students who actually use them, then lockers would be more effective for the students who like to use them.
