Brophy should have more designated air-conditioned eating areas around campus.
Brophy is meant to be a place for community, engagement and learning.Students can’t do any of that if they don’t have the necessities they need to be fully in touch with all Brophy has to offer, food included.
Lunch time, however, is at the time when the Arizona heat is most detrimental to the students. If students can’t revitalize themselves with their food in some of the only places where they’re safe from the heat of Arizona, how can they be expected to be engaged without the energy to do so?
One reason why Brophy should provide more air-conditioned seating areas is the potential health risks. Arizona is hot, to put it lightly.
Heatstroke is and has been a major problem in Arizona. Maricopa County alone had a record 645 reported deaths from heatstroke in 2023 according to PBS News, a record that will only rise as the years go on.
While heatstroke is an extreme case, symptoms such as headaches and the occasional wave of nausea can hurt students and maybe even have them sent to the trainers, making them lose valuable class time.
Heat is also a factor when we consider how it could affect the food we eat here at Brophy. When left outside in the sun for too long, food may go bad, or just provide unnecessary inconveniences including chocolate or ice cream melting, ice packs warming up and others.
The heat brings along with it a seemingly innumerable amount of problems with it, all varying in intensity. Because of this, it only seems to get more ironic that the majority of Brophy students can’t enjoy both a filling lunch and a cool environment at the same time.
Food is not permitted in most air-conditioned places on campus. Air-conditioned areas that students frequent such as the Dutch and the Steele Activity Center all have prohibited any food, something that many students are opposed to.
There are obviously many problems that came with having food allowed in certain areas; it’s the reason it was prohibited in the first place. Things like the extra burden on the cleaning crew and issues with space allocation are genuine problems that would come as a result of this change, but there are solutions for this.
Things like reallocating allowed seating areas could help, but there could be problems with this.
Say the school cut off being able to eat at the Pavilion in exchange for being able to eat in the SAC and the Dutch to help ease the load on the cleaning crew. This would provide an inconvenient choice for students who previously sat in that area.
This is the problem being addressed here. How can we provide more air-conditioned eating areas for students if it’s too much strain on the workers?
This question could be answered by something right in front of us: JUG kids.
Many JUGS are issued every day and the students serving them have to do a variety of tasks. If any campus trash walks or other JUG duties were removed after school, then the remaining kids could be reassigned to garbage duty. They’d be the ones going through the SAC and the Dutch, cleaning up trash and easing the burden of the cleaning crew.
They could also partner with the BEAST Facilities students to take on the extra work. The cleanup crew would keep working on their own routes, while the other students would take the burden of the new areas.
If we want more air-conditioned eating spaces around campus, however, we’d have to make room. The aforementioned Steele Activity Center and Dutch could get full on their own, and no extra seating would be available. This would basically invalidate the very thing we are trying to solve.
A potential solution to this other problem could be freeing up a bit of room in the Robson, maybe on the second floor, for students to eat. Placing some Adirondack chairs or just a few small tables and chairs in there could work, and when the bleachers need to be used, they could easily be moved out after school by some more BEAST Facilities students.
Regardless of logistics, students having to eat in the scorching heat of Arizona really does not have many good outcomes. Sure, it may be bearable, but it can cause many avoidable inconveniences. The Steele Activities Center and the Dutch are both perfect options to relieve students of these problems, and a solution is right under our noses. This is why there should be more air-conditioned eating areas around campus.
