A petition has been making the rounds for the past few months to force freshmen and sophomores to stay downstairs during lunch.

“What motivated me was the thought that the hard work we put in for the 2 years to be able to access the upstairs area and for that to be stripped away from us just felt a little unjustified and i feel like that it need to be brought to our administrators attention,” said Edgar Reyes (12) the co-creator of the petition. 

At the very first STUGO town hall on Nov. 15, the petition was presented to members of the administration. with the town hall meeting, administration was very happy to hear students stand up and advocate for themselves.

“The most compelling argument was the ‘legacy,'” Principal Claudio Cooper said. “I think the students probably kind of used my words back on me because that was the theme that I picked for this year was ‘Building a Legacy,’ and so one of the things that they mentioned over and over again was you know that was kind of their legacy. And that was the one thing that they were going to be missing out on because everyone else prior to them had had that and so they wanted to leave the legacy of having junior senior only upstairs, so I appreciated that part.”

However, underclassmen we spoke to were disappointed with the decision.

“I feel like that’s going to be really unfair for the freshman and sophomores that have been going upstairs,” Santiago Cruz (9) said.

“I think we should just be able to roam the school during lunch, ’cause you know we put in our hours of work, all we get is 40 minutes, so I feel like we should still be able to go upstairs,” Blake Lawrence (10) said.

While the petition has been passed it will not be enforced until second semester starting in January.