Dear Dr. Wes and Marissa: I found “High school lunch trips raise concern” (Feb. 15, Journal-World) very disturbing. As a parent of high school students, I can tell you that while “racing back to school” after lunch may be a legitimate concern, there is an equally serious problem that threatens the safety of our children during the open lunch hour.

MANY students use their half-hour of lunch to use drugs. They don’t seem to care where they go, but they love knowing that they CAN go at lunchtime. Many return after their “lunch,” sit in class, high for the remainder of the day. I have heard several students comment on how they can’t believe how many students are under the influence in their classes.

Surely, parents can see how keeping kids in school for lunch would benefit students, teachers and the administration. Sober kids wouldn’t be distracted by their high classmates; teachers would have a more attentive audience; and administrators might lower their truancy and/or discipline problems.

I’m sure students who don’t abuse their open lunch privileges and their parents will argue that the users can get drugs anytime, anywhere, so why put limits on lunch? I know this, too, but why shouldn’t we take at least one of those venues out of the realm of possibility?

As Free State High School principal Joe Snyder said, open school lunch is a privilege for kids. It’s not a right. Take a stand. Make a rule. If students break it, punish them.

– High School Parent

Marissa: First off, I’d like to say that you’re completely right – there are some students who use open lunch to do drugs or drink. Your use of the word “many” is where I disagree. The majority of students stay at school and eat in the cafeteria.

Most of the people who I know that go out during lunch make a quick run to Chipotle or some other fast food restaurant and scarf it down in the car or bring it back to school to eat. There are also some who use the time to eat lunch with a family member, boyfriend or girlfriend. It also is a good time to run home if something has been forgotten such as a book or paper.

As for the issue of safety, everyone is taking a risk whenever they drive. To use the chance of having a wreck as justification for not allowing students to leave for lunch is irrational. The same reason could be used in an argument to say students shouldn’t come to school at all. I’ve not heard of anyone getting into a wreck because they were speeding to get back to school on time.

One proposition is limiting open lunch to upperclassmen, but that does not work either. Does any staff member know the grade of every student in the school? Plus, Lawrence High School alone has more than 30 exits. There would be no way to find enough staff to monitor them all.

Open lunch has been the policy of Lawrence high schools for as long as I can remember. It would not be fair to suddenly end it. It’s true that some students will abuse this privilege, but it is the same with any privilege. Someone is going to misuse it. Some people don’t pay their taxes, but that doesn’t mean the government audits the whole country. Why? Because it just doesn’t make sense and wouldn’t be fair.

Wes: This is my day to be unpopular. I can just tell. Open lunch has been around longer than Marissa. Yet the world is different today than it was in 1980. I see it as a matter of security. Free flow of students in and out of schools is a luxury many high schools surrendered long ago. Whether it’s drugs, guns or some other problem, schools need to better control the flow of people through their doors. I recall shortly after Columbine walking into Topeka High School and realizing that I could easily drive my pickup truck through the front door, down the hall and up the stairs without being challenged. This rather scared me. In other communities, schools seem like airports or courthouses in how tightly they run security – including wands, metal detectors and armed guards. I don’t know that I’d go quite that far, but some college dorms have tighter standards on who comes and goes than do our high schools.

I consider the information I receive from kids privileged, even beyond names and identities, so I share it sparingly in this column. Yet, in the last five years, more teens tell me their learning environment is damaged by a free flow of drugs through their school. Many students do get high during the school day, and many more are aware of others who do. It’s just a fact of daily life. For some, it’s a hilarious joke. For others, it’s very upsetting. However, without a complete review of the entire security, entry and tracking system in the schools, I doubt that closing lunch will have much effect.

I had a student just the other day tell me “they’re more interested in whether we have cell phones out than whether anyone’s high or drunk.” I’m not there, so I don’t know – but I can assure readers that I have literally a hundred similar stories. The most common goes like this: “Today when the teacher left the room, some kid pulled out this really big bag of weed.” Dear readers, I’ve heard this one about 30 or 40 times in the past five years, and I’ve never had cause to doubt it.

The open lunch hour always has perplexed me. But the real issues are larger. We have to look beyond drunk kids at high school dances and consider what it takes to make our schools real drug-free environments.

– Dr. Wes Crenshaw is a board-certified family psychologist and director of the Family Therapy Institute Midwest. Marissa Ballard is a Lawrence High School senior. Opinions and advice given here are not meant as a substitute for psychological evaluation or therapy services. Send your questions about adolescent issues to doubletake@ljworld.com. All correspondence is strictly confidential.