At Naperville Central, open-campus lunch is a privilege only given to seniors. While many juniors and seniors have very similar days, this is one advantage juniors do not have access to.

During the three lunch periods, seniors at our school are allowed to leave the protection of the school and go anywhere they would like for lunch, given they return for their next period class. Many believe this is the greatest advantage of being a senior.

While the majority of seniors possess a parking spot and do drive to school, leaving the campus and returning within a period is not a problem for them. Also, seniors are looked at as being old and responsible enough to keep track of time and return to school within the period.

It is understandable to believe that the majority of freshman and sophomores are not able to drive and are not accountable enough to manage their time properly so, not giving the lower classes the ability to leave the campus during their lunch period is reasonable.

Open-campus lunch comes with many advantages. For example, students are able to spend more quality time with their friends in a more private setting rather than a loud and busy lunch room. On top of that, students could also save money by going home and eating or finding a fast food joint that offers cheaper food than the all too expensive Sodexo lunches. Open-campus lunch gives students the freedom to choose what and where to eat.

For as long as open-campus lunch has been around for seniors, juniors have never been able to have the same opportunity. In many cases, juniors drive to school and have parking spots themselves. Also, juniors are seen to be just as responsible as many seniors and will return to school on time.

Not only that, but hundreds of juniors either play with seniors on a sports team or share a class together. Juniors and seniors are very similar and quite often share common friends.

Why should juniors lose this great opportunity to spend quality time with their close seniors friends before they ship off to college? That one lunch period could be the only time during the day where they can spend time together and because juniors are not allowed to leave the school, they lose that opportunity.