At Bonita Vista High (BVH) many students don’t get the chance to eat food during school hours. Based on how long the lines take to get food, all of the school lunches that are considered “good” by students run out in a short period of time. This includes the pizza and the teriyaki chicken bowls that are more appetizing to most students.Numerous students don’t have the opportunity to eat school lunches due to the reason that they might be on a diet, lactose intolerant or just don’t like the school food. Many students at BVH would rather stay hungry the whole day without eating breakfast nor lunch and just wait until it’s time to go home to eat something that fit their preferred palettes. 

Benefits of open campus lunch explains that there are many benefits to having open campus lunch, letting the students get the options of what foods to eat instead of having the school lunches. Many students aren’t fond of the school meals given to students, so this system would benefit them.

There are plenty of benefits as to why it would be a great idea to approve students to go off campus to get food. Some students may not even be able to get lunch at school and they may not even have the opportunity to bring a homemade lunch due to a lack of time or budgeting. 

Adding on, students may get tired of having the same foods every week and according to Your Body When You Eat the Same Foods Every Day shares Dr. [Tim] Spector, [a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and the scientific co-founder of microbiome health company Zoe] says eating the same, nutrient-poor foods can lead to low energy, brain fog, and digestive problems.  Meaning eating the same food repeatedly over and over again could lead to many poor health issues. Based on  You’re also more likely to get sick because it causes the immune system to weaken. As for the long-term effects, eating this way has been scientifically linked to a long list of health problems including depression, Alzheimer’s disease, and certain forms of cancer. This could affect the health of students on campus and cause them to be disinterested in getting meals provided by the cafeteria.

Due to scientific studies, it can affect students from learning. According to Importance of Eating it states, “research has shown that students are able to learn better when they’re well nourished, and eating healthy meals has been linked to higher grades, better memory and alertness, and faster information processing.” Not only does this affect their hunger but it also affects students’ thinking and makes it hard to focus in class. Many students would prefer to have an open campus lunch to get a healthier and tastier meal instead.

There are plenty of other schools who allow an open campus lunch but still many do not have this option. Even though there are many pros to having an open campus lunch, there are also many cons to letting students get open campus lunch. Students would have to leave school campus without any adult supervision, and not having someone watch them during school hours could cause students to take advantage of an open campus lunch by not returning when it is time to go back to class. With this in mind, students may feel more inclined to ditch their classes, which will lead to poor attendance. 

However, there is a way to try to prevent students from ditching and taking advantage of open campus lunch. Some options could be to only let a certain grade level have the chance to get open campus lunch. Many other schools also only allow upperclassmen to have an off campus lunch in order to avoid these negative conflicts.

According to Off-campus lunch restrictions, “in legal terms, this responsibility is called ‘in loco parentis,’ meaning ‘in the place of a parent.’ Administrators and staff members must ensure students’ safety while they are on campus, and allowing only upperclassmen to go off campus is one way of doing so.”

This encourages only upperclassmen to have the opportunity for an off campus lunch. There are many reasons as to why it would be a great thing to have an open campus lunch, mainly for a certain grade level, since lots of students who are in a higher grade are more mature and end up making better decisions. 

Having the opportunity to go off campus can lead to many things whether or not it’s good or bad. Even so, this would be something new and can benefit students to get lunch of their choice, despite the negative effects that may occur.