As the school year comes to an end, freshmen understand an unspoken rule: lunch on the Green is for upperclassmen. For some underclassmen, just walking through it makes them feel like everyone is staring at them, waiting for them to leave.
The few times freshmen and sophomores venture to the Green are for activities like Club Rush and International Week. Otherwise, underclassmen sometimes feel unwelcome. “I think it’s a hierarchy at our school,” junior Cubby Derrough said. “Juniors and seniors don’t really want to interact with sophomores and freshmen as much. When you’re younger, you think that everyone’s looking at you, but when you’re older, you don’t really care.”
Students sometimes enjoy activities like cornhole or spikeball on the Green. “I wish there was a place in the G-Wing or somewhere that had things we could play with. That would be fun,” freshman Diya Mahadevan said.
“I never knew about a formal rule that freshmen aren’t allowed on the Green, but I have noticed that mostly upperclassmen hang out there,” freshman Sophia Jacques said. “We’ve never hung out on the Green because it’s busy and no other freshmen we know hang out there.”
Others learned from older friends or siblings. “My sister told me that only the upperclassmen are allowed to go there,” Mahadevan said.
The Green seems to be a special place for the upperclassmen that lets the underclassmen look forward to getting older. “While it might be nice for the juniors and seniors to have something, it can come across as not being fair to everyone,” junior Gabriella Medina said.
The Green is often busy and packed with intimidating upperclassmen, but many of them don’t seem to care about the underclassmen being there.
