As students return to the busy hallways of OHS for the new school year, one issue is already rising to the top of student complaints-stairwell traffic. What used to be a minor inconvenience has now become a full-blown obstacle course for many students trying to get from one class to another on time.
“Because the stairs specifically are so blocked up, it forces me to go around to the side stairs, which takes almost as long as waiting for everybody to move does,” said Ava Shaffer, senior. “I go from the 500 building to the 700 building, and I have to speed walk if I want to make it to class on time.”
The problem is not new to OHS, but it appears to be worse with this new school year. As enrollment numbers continue to grow with more students joining the campus, navigating from building to building has become a struggle for many, especially when the passing period is limited to a mere five minutes, and stairwells are packed backpack to backpack.
“I have absolutely been affected by the traffic because people don’t understand the right side of the road when it comes to walking up and down stairs,” said Paige Trafton, senior. “I am always late to either my statistics hour or I have to book it to class.”
The issue seems to originate from more than just student behavior. Some students believe that the problem may simply have stemmed from how many incoming freshmen were allowed to enroll in the OHS campus this year.
“I think we absolutely let too many people open enroll,” Shaffer said. “If classes are so full that people aren’t being able to take the ones they want, the stairs are so packed people can’t get to classes on time, and the counselor’s office had about 20 kids in it at once at the beginning of the year, there’s clearly an administrative underestimation of how many kids is too many.”
With such a loaded student body, staircases are not the only areas facing crowding. Hallways are becoming harder to walk through freely and even simple things, such as trying to squeeze through doors, have become more stressful.
“Don’t stop in the middle of the hallway. We can congregate outside by the poles or in a classroom, but we don’t need to be stopping inside hallways,” Trafton said.
In addition to much-needed hallway manners, there may be simpler and realistic solutions that could be provided to ease some of the chaos.
“They should unlock the side doors; that would make passing period so much easier,” said Abby Trafton, senior.
The call for unlocking doors around campus for more access points to buildings is becoming more of a popular demand, specifically echoed by several who believe that being funneled through only a few main doors slows down traffic. Other solutions have consisted of reinforcement of proper stair flow to redistribute the direction of students’ paths to class so as to allow for more circulation.
“I think if people actually went up the up side of the stairs and down the down side of the stairs, it would be quicker to get into buildings,” Shaffer said.
For now, OHS students are adjusting as best as any teenager can to the new struggles that come with the upcoming school year, but there are hopes that solutions will arise if the traffic continues, whether that is redistributing traffic flow or allowing for easier access to buildings, the student body is eager to see some improvements in the near future.
“It’s obviously the first weeks of school,” Trafton said. “So you know, people are kind of trying to figure it out.”
