Giving back vs. forced labor

Community reactions mixed to mandatory cafe duty

By Sarah Kim

Senior Jon Kanno expresses his view on cafeteria duty

Sarah Kim, Josephine Muniz, and Katie Jones
October 26, 2015

When a teacher announces to his or her class that they have lunch duty, how do the students react? Is cafeteria duty necessary for our school?

According to the State of Hawaii’s Board of Education, cafeteria duty is required for all Hawaiian public schools to provide students with nutritional meals, learning experiences, and positive eating habits. 

Special education history teacher Laverne Moore said having students take part in lunch duty is important.

“You are preparing them for the real world of what work is about. It teaches students to collaborate with one another in getting the job done whether you’re serving food or washing pots and pans. It’s good community service because all students need to know how to give back to society,” she said.  

Senior Giovanni Rodrigues said, “Some students can’t afford lunch and they get free lunch when they do cafeteria duty.” 

He also said it makes less work for the cafeteria staff.

Cafeteria duty has existed for  years at McKinley High School . 

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 Moore said.

Mandatory lunch duty also occurs in other countries such as Japan. According to japansociety.org, lunch time for Japanese elementary schools is different from primary school students. Students have to take lunch from the kitchen and serve it to their class. After lunch is finished, the student workers have to clean up after the students who ate and return all dishes back to the kitchen.

“The kids in Japan do the same thing because it teaches them how to respect their school and give back to the people,” senior Jon Kanno said.

A teacher noted many aspects of the mandatory cafeteria duty requirement. 

“They have to miss class, and it’s something they really don’t want to do, even kids who don’t eat lunch have to do it.”, Spanish teacher Andy (Vietduc) Tran said.

Students took a survey in their English classes that questioned if students should be required to serve cafeteria duty. The results showed a close match with those who support the policy slightly than the those who don’t.

Cafeteria manager Mitch Arnold said that cafeteria duty is usually only 30 minutes or less. Students get free lunch, and it gives back to the school and classmates. He said all schools in Hawaii have cafeteria duty and it could be much worse. According to Arnold, MHS tries hard to make lunch better for students and he hopes that all students who are against cafeteria duty would have motivation to give back.

This article was originally published on Oct. 26, 2015. Changes in structure, information, and factual errors were made on Dec. 10 , 2015.