Tina Tehrani
Senior Editor
You’re standing on top of the world. You stare down. There are 23 steps. You’re being sucked into your desire to fly over this spiral vertical bridge to enter a hierarchal high school lounge-a land of carb consumption.
You begin to descend from the stairs. There’s a courtyard on your right. Green Bushes. Three trees. Two outdoor tables (one black and one red). A ram statue. Label: freshman.
Indoors: Three rows of twelve tables. Label: Sophomores.
One row of three tables. Two tables horizontally facing the end. Six doorway entries to the outdoors. Label: Juniors.
Four horizontally faced tables. One main doorway entry to the patio. Outside: three black and two red patio tables. One long wall separating the outside from the campus. Label: Seniors.
There’s a logic to the lounge. Senior Lauren Anderson explains her “true love” for this organizational system. “There’s a wonderful thing called seniority which instills a sense of humility into the underclassmen and lets them know they are not that cool as they may think they are,” she said. “It’s a good system that promotes welfare of the senior class which is the most important of them all.”
Back in 1972 when the high school first opened, the lounge was a large dining room that was separated by a bank of glassed windows separating the grades into two sections. The first section was for juniors and seniors and the second section was for freshman and sophomores. The seniors were not allowed under any circumstances to enter the underclassmen section of the lounge due to the possible chances of harassment.
Supervisor Mark Rearick explains this segregation, “Back in my day there was a pretty rigid class segregation,” he said. “This was a couple of years before Vietnam became an issue, were talking mid-60s. So back in those days all the students believed what their government told them. They certainly believed what their parents and teachers told them, so it was a much quieter time but with strict segregation. Nowadays kids are able to sort of form their own little subcultures sociologically speaking. Back in our day they were rigidly assigned to you.”
Other students like junior Paul Templeton think that this organized system should be put away. “Rather than defining ourselves by our thoughts and feelings we do it by age, grade, and looks,” he said. “We should mix with people with whom we mesh, regardless of age or popularity. I think it’s stupid but it does give a sense of order that belongs in such a bureaucratic school.”
Hierarchy. Bureaucracy. Seniority. All three terms explain the influence the seniors have on the school. Senior Kaya Gieniusz explains the intimidation the seniors have over the underclassmen. “It becomes intimidating for underclassmen because they get scared to come to our part of the lounge, which is understandable because I definitely remember being scared of walking in the upperclassmen section,” she said. “But it’s all about getting older and gaining that status that comes with being an upperclassmen. In the end it’s a good thing because at least the underclassmen don’t have to worry about upperclassmen using seniority to take their seats.”
Other seniors like Segolene Dewey believe that it’s a long awaited privilege that develops over the years. “I think we should be entitled to sit where we like, however, this is just tradition,” she said. “We also seem to stick to the status quo. Ever since freshman year, we’ve all been waiting to sit at the senior section. That excitement and that thing were looking forward to won’t change…I just feel this sense of pride for our school. Yes we are all separated by grade but I still feel a sense of unity. Like we are NCHS and were all together in this one free massive place.”
Whether it’s considered something hierarchal the lounge is defined by the order of grades. The seniors are at the top of the food chain while the froshies are the helpless prey. However, it isn’t at such high extremes as it was in 1972.
We discover that this subculture is different than that of the others. It has been a tradition that has been going on for 37 years and it doesn’t look like its going to change any time soon.
Next issue: the hallway kids.
Click here for Mr. Rearick’s view of the lounge circa 1972.
