Note: This story, originally published on Wednesday, has been updated to include information about the reopening of the lounge and CRC.

ON MONDAY, HISTORY teacher and lounge sponsor Chris Butler made the decision to close the student lounge. On Tuesday, Assistant Principal Sue Kovacs closed down the Counseling Resource Center, better known as the CRC.

The rooms have since been reopened, but what exactly was the problem, and why were typical student hangouts closed? Should we expect even more rooms to be closing?

The problem, according to Kovacs, stemmed primarily from within the junior and senior classes, who had recently been leaving their garbage, and other litter, all throughout the first-floor hallway.

“It looked trashed,” Kovacs said of the lounge. “It looked like someone had gone in there and trashed it. And so did the CRC with the pizza boxes and everything like that. And I walked into the kitchen and every table was filled with left bags, left lunch … and the mother in me rose. The mother in me says that when kids do something wrong you get their attention by calling attention to it.”

The first problem was in the lounge, dominated mainly by the upperclassmen, where, after school on Monday, Butler discovered trash scattered throughout the room and, most significantly, a spilled Coke.

The drink had been knocked over and had left a puddle of sticky soda lying in the middle of the lounge so that by the time Butler found it, the can itself was stuck to the floor. When students returned on Tuesday morning they discovered the lounge to be locked and closed down.

As a result, during free periods and lunch those who typically flocked to the lounge were forced out into the hallway, the kitchen, or the CRC. But some students didn’t appear to have learned their lesson from the closed lounge.

While preparing for a meeting, Student Services secretary/registrar Ellen Lindsey discovered the CRC piled high with wrappers and remnants of student lunches. At the same time, Kovacs walked into the kitchen to discover unwashed dishes and a mess that she claimed would trouble public health officials.

As school began Wednesday morning, the CRC was closed to student usage and Kovacs had sent out a studentwide e-mail warning everyone to pick up after themselves.

Although some students claimed that shutting down the CRC was unreasonable, Kovacs said that although the room is supposed to be used to help students with college planning, students weren’t using it for those purposes during their lunch period; instead juniors and seniors went there to socialize and eat their lunch.

Taking into consideration that important meetings and other scheduled events are hosted in the room, Kovacs felt that if students weren’t going to keep the CRC clean then there would be no other choice than to shut it down.

“The CRC is used for meetings, and for counseling, and for that sort of thing,” said Kovacs. “We’ve got to be able to walk into that room at any given time and have company with us, or another counselor, or a college person there, or whatever.”

The problem of trash hasn’t been prevalent on the second- and third-floor hallways.

When interviewed Wednesday morning, Kovacs said that if and only if students were able to present a clean first-floor hallway at the end of the lunch period would they be able to regain their rights to the lounge and the CRC.

Kovacs did warn, though, that if the problem persisted, it could lead to more strictly supervised lunches or having to assign “trash duty” to certain classes (for example, the junior class would be in charge of picking up garbage one day and the senior class would be in charge another day).

“I told the juniors and seniors before the bell rang at 8 o'clock,” said Kovacs, “if you show me a clean hall after lunch and a clean kitchen, then we’ll open the other two things, but not until you can show me that you can be responsible about using the building.”

After school on Wednesday the lounge and CRC were reopened to students due to the impeccable cleanness the juniors and seniors were able to maintain throughout the day. Although the CRC will be closed today (Thursday) due to prescheduled meetings, the students have nonetheless earned back the privilege to the room.

Kovacs said she hopes the closings will teach students to continue to clean up after themselves, and she would like to challenge students to keep the building as clean as possible.

“It may just be post-Agora, but it wasn’t this bad during Agora Days!” Kovacs said Wednesday morning. “It was really not that bad. Yesterday [Tuesday] was an anomaly, and I’m hoping I’ve gotten their attention.”