Culinary Arts is a very popular class at Staples; however, some students simply are never allowed to experience such a thing due to a very unfortunate circumstance: a nut allergy. 

Culinary Arts is not a nut-free class, meaning those with nut allergies either can’t take it or it makes the overall class a hard course to take.

According to a study from 2019, about 6.1 million Americans have nut allergies, including many Staples students. Therefore, the district should make the course nut-free, so that everyone may enjoy the class regardless of allergies. 

Denying someone the full experience of a course due to allergies, something a person has absolutely zero control over, is wrong. It shouldn’t be a difficult course to take just because of that. It is the school and the district’s responsibility to change it in order to fit these parameters. 

Fairfield, a town right next door to ours, already adopted a policy to ban all peanuts and tree nuts from their public school district nearly six years ago, and yet Westport’s school district has not done the same. It’s not just Fairfield for that matter either; many schools from coast to coast have either banned nuts entirely from their schools or made their culinary classes nut-free.

Now, I’m not saying to ban all nuts in the entire district, but what I am saying is that we can at least make Culinary Arts a nut-free course. All students, nut allergy or no nut allergy, deserve to have the full experience in the course and not have it dampened by just having an allergy.