Getting your favorite meals delivered has always been effortless thanks to DoorDashing and Uber Eats. 

Some of the students at Venice High School may find it useful to Doordash and UberEat their lunches to school. 

However, some Venice students, staff, and teachers say that there are advantages and disadvantages to using these food delivery services.

Safety is a big concern when it comes to using DoorDash or Uber Eats, according to campus aid Veronica Contreras.

Part of her job is to supervise students and make sure the students are safe and remain on campus at all times.

Community Representative Marina Manjarrez, who works in the Parent Center, said that one issue is that staff may not know what’s being brought to campus.

“It is a matter of being able to trust the student and make sure they are actually getting food because they could have anything brought to school or in their backpack,” she said. “The safety of the children is what’s important.”

David Lee community school coordinator thinks it has to a lot to do with equality towards the students.

“Even though it is becoming a norm in society I think there is an inequity, not all students have the ability to do that so I feel uncomfortable because once we let one student do it we have to let all students do it,” he said.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate for the school and being that this is a public school we want to acknowledge inequity.”

Students believe that people who require medical attention, have specific food sensitivities such as allergies, or are vegetarians even students who can’t physically eat the school cafeteria food should be allowed to use DoorDash and Uber.

“Some people don’t eat certain things in the cafeteria and not all people are meat eaters,” Nguyen added. 

Senior Mikayla Nackman is a proponent of using food delivery services, especially because she has a lot of dietary restrictions. 

“I have a high tolerance to gluten and everything the cafeteria serves that I know of is not gluten-free,” she said. “I would love to see the option to DoorDash.”

Students are aware that having food brought by a stranger is frequently unsafe, but they believe with staff supervision it should be safe and secure as they would be watched.

“If they have a different policy of their food being here they can tell an admin to watch them and have their food checked to see if it’s actually food it should be okay,” said senior Sheida Mokalleai.

Some Venice staff and teachers said that there is not much staff on the campus already and it would be more of a responsibility than they already have.

“I think that would be asking for too much, to be honest, the campus staff is not here to be the doorman,” Lee said.

“I would disagree with that being a responsibility for our campus security because they are here to keep students safe not to pick up their lunches.”

According to Mairinu Santiago, the Attendance office clerk, there has been a new policy that if you are a senior and you are 18 you can go to the attendance office and legally check yourself out for the day. 

Students feel that the new regulation should also apply to those who need to leave campus for food and then return.

“Having the privilege to grab food and come back should be okay for us seniors, like in my opinion we were responsible. I think it should be gifted to us to have this opportunity” said senior Lalannie Rendon.

 A few of our Venice classmates believe that in this situation, factors like age should be considered. 

“If they can trust us with leaving campus for students who don’t have a 6th period or students who are 18 that check themselves out they should be able to trust us to go get food. In the end, we get hungry throughout the day just for food,” said Nackman.

Some teachers agree that this is something to think about in the future.

“I would like to see it explored as an off-campus pass cause back in the day I was here when we used to do that,” said Lee.

”So yes, I would like to see a conversation come about with seniors, just the seniors though, but not as seniors coming in a demanding way,” said Lee.