Written by Brittany Chapman

When Covid hit in 2020, we left school for what we thought was going to be two weeks. Little did we know it was months of online school, masks, social distancing, and staying away from everyone no matter how much we missed them and wanted to be with them on holidays. Everyone was staying home to keep themselves and the people around them safe. When we came back to school, Morgan was completely different. Freshmen and sophomores were in separate cohorts, attending school in different wings of the building than the juniors and seniors. Even within those groups, students were divided by the alphabet. On two days, one-half of the students attended in person, while the other half joined the class through Google Meets.
This separation was most evident in the lunch waves last year. The freshman and sophomores ate their lunch in the gym, sitting on stickers to remain distanced from other students. The juniors and seniors ate lunch in the cafeteria with one person at a table. The juniors and seniors also had to take a turn to eat in the auditorium. This was widely unpopular with the students.

I asked sophomore Ross Treubig how he felt about lunch last year in the gym, and he stated that he did not like eating in the gym and that he liked having lunch with his friends again and being able to see all the school spirit in the cafeteria. I also talked to senior Jonathan Blair, who did not like eating lunch in the auditorium. He also said that he enjoyed eating and being able to socialize with his friends again.

Principal Kerry Hagness explained how our new 2021-22 lunch system came to be. She told me that along with the superintendent, assistant principal Christopher Luther, and the Department of Public Health, they came up with our new lunch system using the Local Department of Public Health’s guidelines and suggestions. Our new lunch dynamic is very different from last year.

This year we have 4-6 to a table, seating charts, and we are back to full lunch with all grades. We are able to have this new dynamic because of the number of people getting vaccinated. There are about 565 thousand people from the ages 0-24 that are vaccinated in the town of Clinton. State data from September 22nd, states that 76.56% of all Clinton residents received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Mrs. Hagness just wants to ensure the safety of all of our Morgan students. She also said that wearing a mask correctly is an essential part of keeping everyone safe, and if wearing it is what we must do to all be together, then it is essential and part of your responsibility to keep the other people around you safe. Mrs. Hagness assured me that these new lunchroom rules were from the Local Department of Public Health. With the new seating charts, lunch tables are sort of grouped in cohorts, and these seating placements are recorded. This allows cases to be efficiently traced to ensure COVID does not spread to other students and staff of Morgan.

As we work towards being a family again at Morgan, everyone must take every precaution needed to keep all of us safe.