If you could change anything about the school, what would you change? Would you expand the dress code, or maybe modify the cafeteria experience? Add some more classes?

According to a survey, students have tons of ideas like these for ways to improve the school.

Not surprisingly, several students said they would make updates to the uniform policy, especially allowing all Saint Viator sweatshirts even on non-Fridays. Other ideas were adding skirts in addition to pants, having more dress down days and selling more colors of polos.

Other students would choose to improve lunch periods by reducing the price of cafeteria food or permitting students to pay for their lunch with a credit or debit card.

A few students, including sophomore Sarah Hunt, would add more food options.

“I would like to change what we serve during the winter because it’s cold and more hot foods like soup and hot chocolate would be nice, especially if people have sore throats,” said Hunt.

Some other students find it difficult to exit Querbes Hall after lunch and would find a way to make this more efficient.

“One day during lunch, I noticed how congested it was even before the bell rang and we were lining up to get out of Querbes Hall,” said senior Bryce McDonnell. “The bell rang and everybody squished in between the two corridors.”

McDonnell suggested adding a minute to passing periods at lunch times as well as potentially adding a roundabout at the end of the cafeteria hallway to keep everyone moving and eliminate this issue.

Others want to the school to allow off-campus lunch as an option.

“One of the things that people might argue against [off-campus lunch] is that it lacks safety, but I know of many public schools that have a less safe environment than a private school like ours, and they still manage to have off-campus lunches that are safe and effective for the students,” said junior Joe Laterza. “It would probably make everyone in the school happier.”

Some students want to make changes to the academic aspect of school. Their ideas ranged from giving everyone a study hall and making gym and theology pass/fail to having faculty observe classes and offering a drivers’ education class.

Senior Ava Davis said that she would prefer to have more teachers with a psychology background.

“It gives them a better understanding of how kids are reacting in classes and what they are going through,” said Davis.

Sophomore Abigail Varvara said that she wants to switch to more paper rather than digital work.

“Lots of school work is online and there are many times where you have to split-screen and look at a bunch of different things online,” said Varvara. “There’s just so much on the iPad that many times, it’s a relief when I have worksheets that are actually printed.”

Other students’ suggestions had to do with modifying recent policy changes, such as bringing back Cookie Moms, removing ID lanyards, moving finals to before Christmas break and making a later check-in time for e-learning days.

Another popular response was expanding the Freshman Day of Service to other grade levels or otherwise having class-wide events.

“I feel like we don’t have enough bonding events as a grade level and people should experience service with each other,” said sophomore Bernadette Mercurio.

“With Feed My Starving Children and the picnic, they started these bonding events before school even started, but they should keep them going as the school year progresses,” said freshman Sabrina O’Connor.

With such a wide variety of suggestions, who knows? Maybe some of these improvements will come to fruition and make Saint Viator even better.