A Service of The Arrow           Friday December 17, 1999 7:52 PM

ARROW STAFF

Remember kindergarten? There were nice orderly lines of students waiting for lunch. Students would come in from recess through clear, quiet halls, and obeyed the recess and lunch monitors quietly and without protest. In the few short years since then, those kind and obedient students have turned into an enraged, hormone-crazed, obscenity-spewing mob.

Senior Hall is a blatant example of our descent into inconsiderate slob-hood. Candy wrappers, old homework and spilled soda litter the floor, crushed by hundreds of feet stampeding through the school towards their next class. Obscenities and insults fill the air with enough venom and volume that you can hear it from the floor above. Hall monitors are on the rampage and glare you down, asking for a pass — but who wouldn't act like that after being shoved out of the way and run into at least 20 times a day. And the crowds! You can't make it to class on time if you have to go through senior hall because of all the people standing and talking in the middle of the path, blocking everyone's way. There is something wrong when it takes the majority of passing time to squeeze through a hallway not even half the length of the school. Perhaps this roadblock is caused by the astounding number of students congealing near the lockers and hallway entrances.

What is truly sad about this whole mess is that it could be solved so easily. If you don't like coming out of a class and being confronted by a teeming, yelling, shoving mass of student flesh, then take a stand.

1. We have trash bins — regardless of your experiences as a sophomore, they have uses beyond stuffing fellow classmates in. Use them!

2. Don't say (or shout) anything you wouldn't say to your grandmother (assuming she's not in Deer Lodge on felony charges.)

3. Leave the center of the hallway clear for those students still willing and able to move. Not all of us enjoy being shoved by a testosterone-filled jock twice our size who is busy pounding his buddy into the lockers.

4. Gather in small groups. Surprisingly enough, it is difficult to maneuver around a group of 20 people who have wedged themselves into the stairwell.

Now, I know it's a lot to ask, but if we all work together ... Sorry, the kindergarten thing was just catching up to me.

People you see everyday, who seem nice and normal — kind even — change into primitive, pushy, inconsiderate animals when they enter the hallways. We shove and shout, make-out and block the path and toss our trash.

Whatever happened to the beautiful days of kindergarten when the worse offense you saw coming back from lunch was someone cutting in line?

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