It’s 11:55 a.m., B-block just got out, the lunch line is already all the way back to the DEIB office, and students are hungry. They first sneak around to try to figure out what is actually being served– its hard to see around the crowd of students. Students walk in and grab a bowl, then find a friend close to the front of the line and cut with them. Then they walk out like they did nothing wrong and eat their lunch. They do this every day.
With 425 students in the upper school, and only 35 minutes to eat, it is a rush to get food before class. Yet UPrep only appears to keep growing. The admissions office reports that upper school student enrollment has increased from 380 to 424 students from 2023 to 2025. This is why cutting the line is second nature to sophomore Anya Arnold.
“Everybody hates it. I feel bad for the people who wait,” Arnold said. “I fully think about it. Like, I fully plan it out… and now I’m not nervous at all because I’ve done it so many times.”
Arnold is just one of many upper schoolers who choose to skip the wait. More than 32% students report they cut the lunch line, and nearly 28% report they get pizza/salad the majority of the time according to a poll conducted by the Puma Press. Junior Hamish Buick chooses to cut the line.
“I get to the lunch line, and it’s all the way back up to Founders, and I don’t really want to wait 20 years to get lunch,” Buick said. “So I usually find one of my friends who’s in the lunch line, and then I just go up to them and get in the line.”
When leaving class at 11:55, it takes approximately 12 minutes and 2 seconds to get lunch according to seven trials by the Puma Press, but when cutting, it takes almost no time at all. Students who wait in line spend approximately 35% of their lunch in line. When Arnold cuts these students, she says it takes her only a few minutes to get in and out of the line.
“Oh it is 100% not fair,” Arnold said. “But also, I don’t care because it’s a lunch line.”
Sophomore Beckett Nelson cuts the line by joining friends. He cuts to spend time socializing while also getting food faster.
“I don’t believe it’s causing that much harm,” Nelson said. “I just want to be with my friends in the very long lunch line.”
Senior Ethan Butcher doesn’t cut the line, but he says many of his friends do. Butcher prefers a different approach to getting lunch: he waits until the line is short.
However, people who cut the line end up lengthening Butcher’s wait in line..
“Even if I get out of class early and get into the lunch line when it’s short, then [I’m] still waiting 15 minutes because, the lunch line is short but… the line stays there for the first five to 10 minutes while everyone is cutting,” Butcher said.
Director of Upper School Susie Wu has spoken with the commons staff about creating grab-and-go food options at the ULab, making lunch more accessible for students who don’t want to make the trek.
“There could be an opportunity when we start to move to a new schedule that we can look at that lunch period again,” Wu said.
But right now, Wu will stick to managing cutters and imploring them to consider their actions.
“I tend to be one of these people that, to me, an action or a choice in one setting is not just in that one setting,” Wu said. “I think, that’s how you think in life. If you had the opportunity, and you can get away with it, you would just take that cut.”
