Hi, my name is Vian Siriwardena and I'm a student at Newton South. I'm a senior now but I've been going here since my freshmen year in 2019. Recently, my school has implemented a new policy that prohibits students from eating anywhere aside from designated student spaces such as the cafeteria and a few classrooms as well as outside. Now to be clear this policy did not exist during my freshmen year. COVID hit a little over halfway during my freshmen year and I was remote til the end of my sophomore year. When my school started transitioning back to in-person, they implemented this exact policy during then and it continued into my junior year. Now this was completely understandable. The cases in COVID were rising rapidly and the school was trying to ensure that it kept all our students safe. And I'm grateful for that. But it's September 2022, we have vaccines, and COVID isn't as big of a threat as it was back then (let's hope it stays this way). And still, during an assembly for all grade levels on my first week, they reinstated this policy. Their argument for this is that they want to prevent students from leaving their trash after they eat and letting rats into the building. The fact is a lot of students do clean up after themselves and it is just a select few who choose not to. But because of this, now everyone is forced to eat in these designated student spaces. There are 1,896 students in this school. That's a lot of people and we can't possibly cram all of them in a few select spaces. There are literally students with social anxiety who just do not want to be surrounded by people. I'm one of them. And social anxiety is a real thing. We're not being dramatic. But of course, my school didn't take that into account when drawing up this policy and now I can't eat lunch by myself while working quietly on my college applications without a hallway monitor coming and making a big deal about it. It is really shitty to not clean up after yourself, agreed. But if we're not making a mess and cleaning up after ourselves, then I think it's fairly reasonable that we have the right to eat we want to eat. And I want to make it clear: there was no agreement between the school and the students on this matter. There were no emails or Schoology posts sent out to students telling them to please clean up after themselves. They just took notice of this as the school year started to wrap up in June and decided that they were just going to implement this policy without trying to compromise with its students. It is really shitty if you don't clean up after yourself, but it's like saying "okay we don't want students to be talking to one another during class so we're going to place everyone in separate classrooms". It eliminates the problem, yes. But we're in high school and I feel like there should be a level of trust between the school and its students. The school should emphasize why it is important to clean up after ourselves and try to work something out between its student. Not implement this outlandish policy. It feels like the school has no faith in its students whatsoever. After high school, we're going to be adults. You need to teach it students to be responsible and follow simple rules or we're not going to survive in the real world. I highly doubt majority of schools even have this policy and the ones that do, don't really enforce it. Schools are allowed to set certain rules that students should abide by. But this is high school. This directly impacts students who suffer from social anxiety. And I don't think demanding the right to eat where we want is too much to ask. And this policy DOES NOT mean that students aren't going to continue to eat in the hallways. People have anxiety being around almost 2,000 students. Some people just want to have a quick lunch and get some work done in peace. Is it too much to ask that we earn back the right to eat where we want? 

I know this a lot but being one of them, I completely empathize with anyone dealing with social anxiety. And I believe our mental health is just as important as our physical health. I really just want to create an environment where everyone feels heard and signing this petition goes a long way in helping me achieve this. Thank you for taking the time to read my petition against my school's policy.