5K Our Way

By Cate Kavanaugh 

November 2022

Our 5K our way was used on outside furniture.  As someone who hates the dirty cafeteria and much prefers eating outside, I was happy to hear about this idea and excited that this is what the students voted for. But when I saw our new tables outside I was utterly shocked that that was what we used about 5,000 dollars on. I know that that amount isn’t enough to make a huge difference in the school, but I feel there could have been better ways to execute the plan. 

There are three tables with four seats at each table, making all the tables have only twelve seats in total. The tables themselves are quite large and could definitely fit more people, but to only have 4 seats on each table is just a waste.  And if they were attempting to make them wheelchair accessible by leaving extra space between seats it is still not great because there are large bars between the seats which would make it difficult to achieve that.  In addition one table is missing a seat to be wheelchair friendly, but there are only 3 seats on that table and there are much more efficient ways to achieve that accessibility.  

My suggestion would be to have larger picnic style tables with long benches on either side and that could fit 3 to 4 people on each bench. On the ends of the table,  extra overhang could easily make the tables wheelchair friendly.  One option I found from “Treetop Products” was a table with very similar material to the tables we have, but it is a picnic table style instead and has extra overhang to provide wheelchair accessibility. The price was around $1,100 and with possible additional costs we would most likely only be able to get three tables to us to stay under budget, but instead having double the amount of seating. Obviously, this problem is also due to the small budget of the “5K Our Way” not really being able to make much of a difference with that amount, but it could have been executed better and fit in the budget. Overall, I feel like the 5K was such an exciting thing we as students could decide on and there was a big build up for it, but it just ended up being a disappointment. 

I talked to a member of the group that created the outside furniture idea in their Public Speaking class. She said it was difficult to create a plan only having 5K to use and trying to make a positive change to the school.  She gave examples of people wanting hand dryers in the bathrooms or redoing the bathrooms completely, but it was definitely not achievable with only 5,000 dollars. She states that her group “just couldn’t think of anything else that would fit in the budget”, even if the tables “might not be the best thing for the school”.  She does wish they had a larger budget to work with because it would have been obviously a lot easier to come up with a plan that would make more of a difference in the school and to get something more people would be happy with.  Her and her group picked out the tables that fit in the budget, but she just agreed that it was a bit of a disappointment with the size and the amount of people it is able to seat. But she also says that this idea was the one students voted for so “instead of complaining now” people should have voted for something else when they had the opportunity to.  She said overall “it wasn’t executed as we all hoped”, but in the end we only had $5,000 to work with so she believes it was a good choice for that amount of money.  

I agree with the group member, because I do think it was a good idea considering we only had $5,000 to use and I did even vote for this. But again, I just feel that the tables we got had a very inefficient amount of seats and could have been better while staying under budget, therefore not being the best use of our money.