Upon walking into the cafeteria, or sitting down at the table, a question popped into my head: why is it so cold in here? On a cold winter day, a view of the cafeteria will find you an abundance of coats and students curled into themselves to keep warm. If you have lunch in the middle of your class, you’ll probably leave most of your things in the classroom. The four necessities of lunch: phone, lunch box, water, coat.  It seems trivial to bring a coat to lunch and leave a backpack, but it’s just the standard procedure. 

 Fast forward to some of the warmer months and the coats have disappeared, but the chill has not. As February gives way to March and 50-60 degree days become something of the norm, people’s outfits begin to change. Hoodies and coats are exchanged for short sleeves with a jacket, and long pants change to shorts, but with the freezing air of the cafeteria still lurking, it makes it hard to get through lunch without shivering. Sitting outside when it’s warm seems like a good solution, but with few tables outside, or at least in the sun, it makes it hard to take advantage of this option. 

What doesn’t seem to help the situation is the fans that are constantly on; they don’t seem like much, especially considering how high up they are, but I can attest that when you’re right underneath one, you can definitely feel it. Especially if someone is sitting  in the Falcon’s Nest, where the fans are even closer. 

Shivering your way through lunch is the surest way to make lunch less enjoyable. It’s hard to carry out a conversation when the only thought is  how cold you are. 

After a day of long, hard classes, lunch can be a sort of reprieve from the trials of the normal school day, but as I said before, when you’re spending the entire lunch bouncing your leg up and down to get warm, or pressing freezing fingers to your neck so they won’t be so cold, it makes it  hard to enjoy that break. 

While the rest of the school is cold, the cafeteria seems to rival January in its ability to numb fingers. All in all, there’s really no reason why the cafeteria should be so cold, especially if the problem could be fixed. A simple start would be to  turn the fans off. (So even if it’s cold at least there won’t be cold air blowing directly on you). Even if it doesn’t seem like that big of an issue, changing the eternal winter of the cafeteria would greatly improve the day.