By Ryan Kupperman, Copy Editor
 On Tuesday Dec. 4, 2018, Deans Mark Taylor and Lisa Soukup sent an email to every student emphasizing that off-campus lunch is a privilege, not a right. According to Taylor, District 214 looked at other schools across the country in order to form criteria that emphasizes open-campus lunch as a privilege-based opportunity. Starting second semester of the 2018-2019 school year, the district will be implementing and enforcing a policy to ensure a “safer space for the privilege of off-campus lunch.”
      According to Taylor, this policy would be enforced similarly to the mandatory scanning of student ID’s in the morning, where students would scan their ID’s at lunch and a security guard will check for the required criteria.
      Although all freshmen still do not have open-campus lunch, in order to be able to go off campus during lunch sophomores, juniors and seniors must have at least a 2.8 GPA, no F’s on their semester report card, no out of school suspensions as well as get a permission slip signed by December 14, turned into the attendance office, by their legal guardians.
       Taylor also points out that, although there are always problems with implementing a mid-year policy, all the school has to do is work out the kinks within the system. Throughout the next couple weeks, and possibly a few weeks into January, Taylor emphasizes that they will be conducting tests to continuously improve upon the policy.