Lockers Providing Little to No Use For Students 

Lockers prove to be more dangerous than they let on to be.

Students hardly ever use their lockers because of how inconvenient and unnecessary they can be.

Although they may not seem like it, empty and un-used school lockers can be considered very dangerous. The majority of students don’t even use lockers during the school day. With little to no record of who could be using these lockers, it leaves space for unsupervised storage. 

Although teachers, administrators and staff do their best to make our school a safe place for children to learn and grow, there are some dangers that simply can’t be avoided. In an article published by HealthGrove, experts used data from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to evaluate the most dangerous items involved in school-related injuries reported between 1997 and 2014. The resulting list of 20 items included some unsurprising offenders, however, at No. 8, an average of 7,558 injuries each year involved ordinary lockers.

Slowly, the rust will deteriorate the locker, leaving behind sharp edges that can easily cut or injure a student. The heavy doors are notorious for pinching fingers and catching on knuckles, the rough and worn edges of the shelves and corners scratch exposed skin and even tear pieces of clothing. This is one reason why many schools are transitioning away from traditional metal lockers and looking toward newer and less harmful materials. 

With each locker providing no depth, students often have to morph their bodies around the lockers and around each other to navigate through the halls during class change, juggling books, backpacks and other school supplies. The lack of depth in the used lockers leaves students to stuff them to the brim with books, papers and notebooks. 

On a poll conducted on the livewire Instagram, less than 6 percent of the 89 students who voted use their school lockers. Junior, Christopher Martin, who doesn’t use a locker thinks there is no use. “The hallways are too crowded to use them not to mention there’s not enough time,” said Martin. The hallways are flooded with approximately 1500 students walking through the hallway shoulder to shoulder making it difficult to open or even get to your locker between classes. 

On student schedules, there are 60 minutes allotted for each period. Each class is 55 minutes long, which leaves five minutes for students to get to their next class. Within these five minutes, students are also expected to use the restroom, go to their lockers and anything else they would need to do before class all while following the hallway traffic patterns. Because of these circumstances, many students, such as Martin, agree that there is not enough time.

With these conditions, the question still stands if lockers are still as useful as they were intended to be.