The dread that comes with an open campus

Our school has kept our campus closed for lunch for over 125 years. Students have always wondered why it hasn’t been considered for it to be open, especially since Atascadero High School, our rival school 12.5 miles away, has an open campus. So why can’t we have equal treatment?
The reasoning is simple.
Could you really imagine getting in and out of the parking lot and getting food in 35 minutes? I get to school half an hour before the bells rings to avoid the morning traffic. Even after school, if I don’t bolt to my car right after the bell rings after sixth, I will most likely be waiting in my car for 20 minutes just to get out of the lot. Our parking lot is flawed, but that isn’t the main point.
Even walking off campus for lunch would take 10 minutes just to get to the Food 4 Less shopping center and another 10 to get back, leaving 15 minutes to get food. We also have to consider the wait time to get said food.
You could just say, “just make lunch longer,” but even as a senior in high school I would much rather spend that time learning than have an extra 10 minutes for lunch, which would result in shortening class periods or lengthening the amount of time that we are at school.
Forty-six percent of schools in California are open campus, higher than the nationwide average of 37 percent, according to a 2006 survey held by the Public Health Advocacy Institute. And out of the 12 high schools in SLO county, only one is an open campus.
Another problem would be students ditching.
It would just make it easier for students to leave campus and miss the last two periods of the day. An argument to the previous statement could be if a system was put in place where, if a student ditches too often, they will get their privileges revoked, but students will find a way to get around this. Security won’t be able to remember all the students who are frequent violators and students will just hide people in their cars. As for the only upperclassmen rule, this would force security to check student IDs and that would make the wait to get off campus even longer.
And once a student is off campus, the idea of not going to the last two periods of the day may become very tempting, especially as the year goes on, and the amount of tardies and absences would go up.
The average person spends $10 per visit at a fast food restaurant, according to Business Insider. If that happened every day students would spend $50 per week, which is a drastic difference from spending five dollars per day at school or $25 per week, half that of a student who goes off campus every day.
Students would be more prone to accidents. People walk across this the parking lot carelessly and a student that is texting and driving wouldn’t notice and may hit someone.
But either way, having an open campus will not help the student body. It will just cause more problems and more congestion in the parking lot that we don’t need.