For many Southeast students, their first destination when arriving at Southeast of Saline once was their locker. It stored many of their heavy books and saved students some back pain. However, this year it is looking different with COVID precautions. If we used lockers, people would be very close to each other and not be social distancing. Students do not get to have the advantage of lockers and have to carry their books, personal belongings and candy/food in their bookbags. Plus, this year’s seniors do not get the glory of the “senior lockers” and the senior lounge.

There are pros and cons to this situation. Some students are disappointed about this but for some, they don’t mind not having lockers. “I think that especially for this year, lockers have been incredibly unnecessary, because not only do we have half of the things in our bag, but it’s for a full week. Also, we don’t have things like math books this year, so our bags are fairly empty and light.” says sophomore Mackinley Johnson. Some people can agree with this fact because most of our books are now online and if we do have books most teachers let us leave them in the classroom.

Senior Emalie Hall says, “I think we should use our lockers. When we are not using our lockers, we have to keep our books in our bags, and keeping the heavy books in our bags hurts our backs. When we have the books in our bags, we start to hunch our backs over from the heaviness of our bags. This makes our posture then look bad. Also, how does COVID-19 affect our lockers? We all have to walk in the hallway all crowded by each other, so what is the problem without having lockers?” Some people can also agree with this. Some like to use their lockers so they can get rid of supplies to make their bags way lighter. 

Everybody has their own opinions about not having or having lockers this year. While it is a big change this year, students and staff are adapting to it well. There are online books that teachers are trying to push students to use so we would not have to carry heavy books. Also, students are getting more time in between classes without going to their locker so they have less of a chance of getting tardy.  Southeast is trying their best to keep everyone safe in this situation by eliminating lockers so we would not be in a cluster for a long period of time, but students having reservations against this safety precaution is understandable.