Binders. Laptop. Textbooks. Notebooks. Writing material. Snacks. All this adds up to about 15-40 pound backpacks that we are forced to carry around every day on our shoulders. But it wasn’t always like this.
Before the pandemic, Mark Keppel assigned lockers to every student. The sound of banging locker doors could be heard before, during, and after school as students deposited and retrieved their belongings in their designated lockers. However, after the pandemic, the school has closed off the lockers from students’ use and sits empty even now. Only students in the band and orchestra, who need space for their instruments, are allowed to have lockers located in C building.
School officials stated that the discontinuation of hallway lockers is to decrease the number of people in hallways, a safety measure against the spread of Covid. However, with the lift of indoor mask mandates and looser policies about Covid restrictions for activities and events, many students believe that access to lockers should likewise be restored to students.
Current seniors at Keppel are the “last generation” at school to have lockers before the pandemic, and many still miss the efficiency of lockers. Senior Jill Radon states, “Now that we’re back on regular schedule, I have to carry a lot of books, and they’re really heavy.” She also states that lockers were a good way to leave unnecessary items in. Another senior, Kyle Lee, feels like there are both advantages and disadvantages of not having lockers. He comments that “it’s good that we don’t have lockers because, if we’re crowded in hallways, that’ll create more chances of Covid. But we should still have lockers because we need to store our stuff in them instead of carrying it around.”
As of right now, the weight of students’ backpacks is of concern. According to Healthline, students should carry backpacks no more than 10% of their weight. Cleveland Clinic pediatrician Dr. Bradley Weinberger states that backpacks heavier than this can lead to “musculoskeletal pain, sore neck and shoulders, and poor posture”, along with other spinal issues.
If restoring lockers completely is not a plausible solution, some other ways to lift the weight off students’ shoulders would be to implement a system of sharable lockers, lockers that can be used for short periods of time and then cleaned out.