El Pollo Loco

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Leftover Policy: Worth Continuing?

A nice meal in KMLA means not only the tasty menu but also the pain: pain of eating up everything on the dish, and pain of suppressing oneself to eat fast not to late. Eat fast and eat everything-that is what the ‘leftover policy’ requires students in their daily lives. This Halloween Mr. Sung have announced in the morning assembly that he will intensify the policy by sending the students with leftovers right away to the court. The policy called on a debate between students: should the policy continue? Basic need, efficiency, and justification are the main issues.

The policy here means this: a student goes to court if he has leftovers on his plate and get two penalty points. It therefore enforces students to eat up all they got. Students, who can never know exactly how much they will eat, especially when there is something new on the menu, always struggle before they go pass the ‘checkers’. They have to eat even though they get surprised by the bad taste of something in the dish. For the whole mealtime students have the pressure on their shoulders that they have to eat everything on their plate. When the menu is fabulous the line gets longer, and then when the students finally get the food they do not get to eat and appreciate the nice meal because they have to eat everything in such short time, shortened due to waiting. If there was no such policy, there can be some leftovers but the students will be much more fulfilled for appreciating the food slowly. Eating is one of the three basic needs of happiness, and the leftover policy suppresses students to eat fast and eat everything, which takes the students away from fulfilling that basic need.

Efficiency: there are better alternatives-better because it solves the previous problem-and thus there is no need to pursue the policy. The alternatives here are two kinds: first, collect the leftovers separately in grades, weigh them and compare them publicly, and second, to check not the leftovers but the amount the students get on their dish. The first suggestion is actually proven by Mr. Sung itself to be effective. He, about one month ago at the morning assembly, announced that the amount of leftovers decreased outstandingly when the first alternative was going on. That way promotes the students to minimize leftovers voluntarily, not coercively like the current leftover policy does. It definitely solves the previous problem mentioned, because then it is the students who have their choice-freedom-and no suppression with the penalty points. The second proposition is checking before eating. The purpose of leftover policy is to prevent students from getting more of the certain tasty menu than the students can actually eat, eventually leading the students after them to wait or not able to have that dish. Checking before eating is to check if the student extended the amount for one person-such as, one yogurt per person. This would allow the students to have a relief from eating-fast-and-all stress while eating, and also fulfill the purpose of the leftover policy.

Moreover, last but not least, the justification problem is the hot issue. Student self government, what KMLA is or is supposed to be, means students take care of themselves. Administration, Legislative and Judiciary branches exist for students’ own sake and students have authority over them. Of course teachers may intervene in some parts, in order to help the self-governing system work well, but they cannot meddle in the system itself. Mr. Sung’s policy infringes the authority of the legislative, which is actually infringing the rights of students, because his policy never went through the student council but he just directly had it in action. That is actually dictatorship: especially because the policy actually sends students to the court. The court, which is supposed to be moved by the students, should not convict the students caught from the new policy guilty because what they violated is not a valid law-not something that is passed by the student legislative. However Mr. Sung misused his authority to convict them as guilty, which makes KMLA not a student self-governing school but a society under the dictator Mr. Sung.

There are millions of conditions needed to make a person happy, but there are three main, basic needs. Those three basics are needed to be fulfilled to allow people to live like humans, and thus eating, which is one of them, is needed to be fulfilled. The leftover policy obstructs that fulfillment by suppressing the students to eat everything and eat fast. Also the efficiency matters: there are better alternatives that do not result in the problem previously mentioned, which are competing between grades and checking the amount on the plate before eating. Most of all, the policy cannot be justified because only the student legislative can pass the law that is applied to students. No matter how delicious the meal is, if the student cannot have it relaxed the meal does not worth much: just like one not able to enjoy good books if they are assigned for exams.