Does it make sense to eat close to hundreds of other kids in the middle of a pandemic?

What if one student gets sick then their whole table has to quarantine? But on the other hand you get to socialize a whole lot more than just sitting with the same people for 2 hours. Now you have your whole table or at least some of your friends.

   “Whenever I try to find the same seat as the other day, it’s like gone, like someone is sitting in my seat. No one respects the assigned seats.” Marissa Decker (10) said.

   Decker says that no one respects the assigned seats so they said they have to go searching for a new one almost every lunch she has. Decker said they dont mind having to sit in the same seat because no one really stays in the same seat.

   “No one really cares about the assigned seating, honestly everyone sits wherever,” Brittany Cabrera (10) said.

   Cabrera thinks that everyone sitting in the same seat is pointless because no one follows the rules. She said why enforce it when no one’s going to listen. Cabrera says the lunch lines are longer since everyone is in the lunchroom because no one wanted to eat lunch last year since no one wanted to leave the classroom. 

   “I prefer eating in the cafeteria much more than in classrooms because in classrooms it was very quiet and you could only sit with people in your class.” Nyah Gomez (11) said.

   Gomez said that sitting in the classrooms with the same kids for 2 hours isn’t how she’d like to spend her lunch. She said she enjoys talking to her friends instead of sitting in silence.

   “Now that we are in the lunchroom, I can sit with more of my friends and actually talk to people,” Gomez said.