If you take a walk around the perimeter of the cafeteria during lunch, you might notice a stark inequality in seating arrangements. In the de facto freshman areas, students are often sitting 10 to a table, if not more, and one can literally feel the body heat by walking between two rows. Walk over to the upperclassmen tables, and it’s as if you walked into a different cafeteria altogether. There are often only 4 to a table, and even then, there are often at least two tables that are literally empty. At one point I counted four completely empty tables. Think about it: what is wrong with that picture?

In the cafeteria, the invisible boundary between the freshmen and sophomores is the row of benches in the middle of the room. It would be a study in futility try to redefine the boundary through school mandates, so a better solution would be to literally move said boundary. If we move two or three benches forward, then we can move some of the upperclassmen tables to the other side of the benches. Voila! more room for the freshman. Why not put some of those empty tables to better use? This is about first impressions of the school, and we all know how long those last.