I’m usually not a very emotional person. Of course, I cried the requisite tears when Babcock and Brown lost the Student Council co-president elections and when UConn beat Butler in the NCAA championships last year, but for the most part I keep my cool. Then one day this summer, as I was shuffling through the halls after cross country practice, I saw something that truly chilled my bones to the core. As I peeked down the foreign language hallway, expecting to see the rows of lockers through the middle of the hall that have long marked my beloved homeroom’s spot, I stumbled upon a corridor with a ghostly chasm of emptiness that sent shock waves through my body. My locker was no longer there. I took a moment to collect my thoughts. I thought about all the good times we had had together: leaving my #6 sub in there until bugs came (this could explain the cockroach problem), forgetting my locker combination and having the most stressful day a freshman could imagine, and frantically shoving a saxophone case through that was half a centimeter wider than the locker. My locker had been an endless source of memories for me, and now that it is gone, it is almost like my memories are gone as well. Of course, the school did give us new lockers, with mine being all the way down in the “Harvard Hall” (to see the WEB’s official view on these travesties of names, please see ‘Hallway Names’ by Alex Constant). All the convenience of my previous location had vanished. I now have to trudge all the way downstairs to bring my contraband lunch to fourth period (to see the WEB’s official view on the food Nazis at Ames High, please see ‘Students Lose their Freedom of Food’ by Katie Upah). So why has this inconvenience marred the halls of our beautiful high school? I think someone said something about wanting to get the ALP classes out of the basement and integrate the different subjects, but all I heard was “we want your life, and you specifically Bryan, to be miserable.” Other students are clearly upset as well. As senior Jared Perez-Guerra explained, “My new locker is one of those crappy ones that never opens!” Senior Grant Bogdanove feels the same way. “I liked the old arrangement way better. I wish we could go back,” he said. The only nondissenter I could find was our beloved hall monitor, James Brockway. “I don’t really mind it,” he said. Easy for him to say; he doesn’t have a locker. Ok, so you say I’m exaggerating – fair enough. You say that it’s a minor change and a necessary one – maybe. But however good most of the changes at our new high school are, I’m still not too excited about having to walk a little bit further every time I visit my locker.