The Lincoln Log

Among the sea of Lincoln students in the crowded hallways during passing period, one could easily notice the brightly colored red lockers lining the walls. Exactly 2,533 lockers make Lincoln High their permanent home. But many problems arise when it comes to assigning lockers, maintaining good conditions for the lockers, and break-ins.

Lockers are slowly wearing down as each school year comes to a close because students don’t take care of their lockers. Nor do they care. They plaster stickers all over the doors and on the insides as if it were their own property, when really it’s not. They try to stuff their million pounds of books into their tiny locker, hoping the door will shut and not jam. Students also get into the habit of sharing lockers with their fellow comrades because they are “lazy” and don’t want to hike up to the third floor to their secluded locker. They share with friends who have more conveniently placed lockers. Who would want to walk to their basement locker to get a physics book when their class is on the third floor?

Yet another locker problem that occurs: locker break-ins. This year thus far there has been only two to three reports of locker break-ins, but in some incidents the victims have gotten their stolen items back. Still students shouldn’t leave valuables in their lockers.

If you have any lockers problems, please write your name, homeroom and locker situation on a piece of paper and drop it in Assistant Principal Barnaby Payne’s mailbox.

But the students’ copious amount of laziness isn’t the only problem. The main problem is our poor, ancient card filing system for assigning lockers. Yes, this method goes way back in the day when our parents were only toddlers. This old filing system is getting too old and hard to keep organized. Students often find mysterious books and possessions in their lockers that don’t belong to them. This old filing system causes severe mistakes and has assigned two people the same locker countless numbers of times before.

But this year security guard, Rod Palaby, is working on a project to help update and streamline the locker assigning system so that in the fall 2007 school year everyone will get his or her own locker. Payne’s teacher assistant, junior Lily Kong, is also helping with the new system. It will be an electronic database that will be much more easier to handle.

Payne is in charge of buildings and grounds and hopes that this filing system will be much easier.

“All of the [locker] combinations will be changed and the entire system will now be electronic on the computer; it will be much easier to determine who has which locker,” Payne said.

Seniors who are graduating this year will have their locker combinations changed after they graduate so they cannot come back and revisit their locker.

“[Students who are] sharing lockers are doing everything at their own risk! Everyone will have their own combination, the freshman class will get new lockers when they enter high school, and for kids who are leaving Lincoln, we’ll delete their combination,” Payne said.