A DIRE SITUATION: WHAT TO DO WITH THE YORK SCHOOL'S THIRD FLOOR WALL GAP.

Written by Jade Hauber, 06/11/2025.

The Third Floor Wall Gap: A Treasure Trove of Unused Space

By Jade Hauber

Some of you may be familiar with this wall gap on the third floor, across from room 322.

Apologies to whoever is in the back of that photo, I was too lazy to crop it.

Anyway. This wall gap presumably exists because there’s not enough space for one of York’s weirdly shaped Llockers (pronounced “L Locker”). If we had regular lockers that just go straight up and down, this wouldn’t be a problem, but apparently we have to settle for dividing our school between tall people with top lockers and shelf space on top and other people with back problems from bending down all the time. Since I can’t change the shape of every locker in the school, however, I’ve decided we must find a more creative way to use this wall gap.

Now, I have math in room 322 every other day. Frequently, the classroom is locked before we can go inside, especially on week B sleep-in days. This means we’re waiting outside for a while. Personally, I like to wait in the wall gap. It’s just big enough for me and my backpack to fit facing forward or backward. However, if I wear my backpack in the wall gap I have to lean back very far to reach the wall, because my bag is pretty chunky. All of this is a long way to explain that this wall gap can fit a minimum of one person and probably a maximum of one person, unless you get two children and stack them on top of one another, which definitely expands its possible uses.

Naturally, the first thing I really thought of to put in here was a one-person sauna. All we need is a door and some sauna machines, maybe we could even put a tiny seat in the back, who knows. This would be relaxing and a great opportunity to wind down during spares or between classes. We could have a schedule for who gets to use the sauna and people could sign up for shifts (however, this could get very crowded so we’d have to limit people to maybe three uses per academic year). A sauna would benefit the entire student body and perhaps teachers as well.

When I brought this idea up to the Stand at our meeting earlier today, the first comment I got was that I should write an article similar to this one but about the holes in the wall in the gym changerooms. But the second comment I got was the words “vending machine.” I thought it was perfect. We’d just need it to be a very skinny vending machine. I think it could sell notes for different classes, chocolate, fidget toys, gum, watches, pencils with life advice on them and other useful things to the everyday teenager. It could be like a second cafeteria. We could set up a table and chairs there. Or we could get one of those fancy vending machines that makes frozen yogurt or bubble tea or something. 

Now that I’m thinking about it, if we can fit a person in there, we could probably fit a TV, maybe a bean bag chair. One of those vertical beds that astronauts sleep in! Something relaxing (I really like to sleep), maybe a massage chair or something. We could put speakers in. I don’t know.  

I think, with some tiny touch ups, we could turn it into an office space. We should probably paint the walls though because in that lighting (and any lighting (what who said that)) the wall colour of the school is UGLY. Speaking of which, we should put some warm lights in there.

Anyway, those are all the ideas I have, so I’d like to petition the school board to fill this space with something. Maybe a skating rink or pool for some of our school sports teams that don’t get to practice in the gym. 

Thanks for reading!