By Katherine Kim ’18, Staff Writer

The common room, a place where the general middle school body congregates on a regular basis. As a new student to Newark Academy I was pleasantly surprised at the prospect of being able to use a whole room to freely study or socialize with peers. However, are Newark Academy students misusing the room and taking it for granted? After a mere month of school gone by, the common room’s clutter seems to be more common. Miscellaneous wrappers just short of the trash can, forgotten pencils and the occasional neglected instrument left overnight litter the common room. However, the 8th graders are comfortable mingling with the 6th graders and there seems to be no animosity sharing space. Is this class of Middle Schoolers just as messy as the other grades or is this class a bit messier? We spoke with a senior, Alex Tarowsky on this matter.

K: In which grade did you make the most of the common room?

A: Heading into 8th grade my friends and I were really excited to be the “kings” of the middle school, and we considered the common room to be our palace.

K: Did the common room look different back then?

A: The room looked a little different back then, as instead of one large clump of tables in the middle there were several wooden round tables at different corners. One of my friends accidentally broke one of those tables; I guess that’s why they changed to the rectangular, more sturdy ones.

K: Was it messy?

A: The common room was definitely messy almost all the time. I think everyone put their backpacks on the shelves, but there still always seemed to be garbage on the ground, and nobody ever made an effort to clean it up unless told to do so.

K: What was your favorite aspect of having the common room to use?

A: Despite how it looked, we all cherished the common room because it was a part of the school that we could call our own.

So, it appears that the clutter in the common room through the years is quite common. However, let’s try to keep the common room at its neatest, starting with the simple actions of cleaning up after ourselves.