Letter to Mrs Corry

Dear Mrs. Corry,
My name is Euan McGarvie (5c3) and am writing to you on behalf of those who use the drama studio as a common room during lunch times. I am writing with regards to the letter that was given to us during lunch time today giving us information on the changed rules on the use of common rooms and would like to express some concern over some of the new rules..

We have read over the new revised common room rules and many of us have some issues with the some of the new rules , namely the rules concerning the maximum number of people allowed in the common room and not being allowed to bring food into the common room.

We are aware that there are some pupils of the school who abuse rights and do not follow the current rules regarding common rooms. However, we feel that restricting every student, including those who don’t abuse the rights given to them, only makes things worse.

We feel that the rule concerning the maximum number of people in the room is flawed in the sense that the drama studio, which we use as our common room, is a larger room than usual and is generally more accommodating for a larger number of people than a normal class room given the absence of tables and chairs. The new rules restrict us to twenty people in our common room, it is our opinion that with a larger room it would be fair to allow thirty. Currently there are approximately thirty people using the common room and have had no problems in keeping the room tidy in the four months we have been using it.

We also find the banning of the consumption of food within the common room. We can understand that food is not allowed in many parts of the school to avoid litter and cutlery etc. not being returned to the canteen. However, our common room is situated particularly close to the Atrium and has several bins inside the room itself and have had no complaints from the teacher using the room to teach to date. We simply feel that with the new rule of being unable to eat inside our common room, the point of having the common room is defeated as our principle activity inside the common room is socializing while eating lunch. We think that a better way of tackling this problem would be to fully implement the anti-litter rules inside the common rooms and put more focus onto getting the pupils to take responsibility for cleaning the rooms. A possible compromise we have come up with would be to ban food being brought in from the school cafeteria, but to allow packet lunches to be eaten in the common room. This would make the issue of cutlery and dishes not being returned to the cafeteria no longer a problem and would allow food to be consumed inside the common room as before.

It would be greatly appreciated by the users of the drama studio if you could get in touch as soon as possible so that we could talk over the issues raised above. I can be contacted in Mr. Greens classroom every morning during registration if you want to get in touch.


Yours sincerely

Euan McGarvie

Tell me if you want anything added or taken away fron this.