Have you heard what’s spreading all over Ida B. Wells-Barnett High School(IBW)? It’s the school’s new vending machine. Located by the front entrance, the vending machine holds a variety of energy drinks, sodas and other items for the students to quench their thirst and hunger.
The vending machine creates another place for the community of IBW to access more fun, treats, drinks and snacks. This is because the student store and cart are only open during lunch and flex; the student store committee proposed a vending machine to keep it open all the time. These drinks that the vending machine offers include sodas such as Dr. Pepper, A&W Root Beer and Sprite. All of the sodas are diet, this is because of the laws set in Obama’s presidency, The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, so we aren’t allowed to sell full sugar soda. The law was made to protect children from unhealthy habits with sugar. They also sell other non-soda drinks, which include tea, water and juice-type products like Izze. They used to have liquid death, but had to remove it because they were too heavy for the machine. They are currently working on getting smaller cans to meet the customer demand. The other treats they have include Rice Crispies and chips.
IBW did, in fact, have vending machines around 5-6 years ago, according to Ken Muraoka, the business teacher at IBW. These machines were run quite differently from the one we have now. First of all, they had multiple of them around the school by the locker rooms and right outside of room 214. These machines were not run by the school; it was a company that placed around the building. There were problems with this because the vending machine company began to charge extremely high prices for students, making them not want to buy much or anything.
Since the school thought that these prices were unfair, they cut off the vending machine suppliers. IBW never thought about getting vending machines back because of this experience. But this all changed when students from IBW wanted to create a vending machine for the community. They reviewed the idea with Muraoka first and then asked the principal for approval and finally approved by the CTE office. Officially getting the vending machine from a seller. The system now works completely differently, putting all the money earned into the student body account. This holds all the money from not only the vending machine, but the student store and cart.
Every dollar given to the student store and vending machine goes to the student body account, which is basically a bank account, but it is only usable for the student body. That means if you can’t pull out money for other resources, other than things that are for students and the community of IBW. These withdrawals can include buying inventory for the store, repairs to the cart or the vending machine and student activities.
Many people often go to the vending machines throughout the school day, between classes, lunch, or even during class. There are a lot of students who love this new addition for the reason that it is open all day. Lucie Longueil, a freshman at IBW, is very fond of the new vending machine. Stating that she uses it every day, she also says, “It’s much better than the student store because I can avoid social interaction and everything isn’t sold out.”
Now, these problems can arise since it isn’t under supervision, but there are outlets for helping these very fixable problems. Make sure to talk to Muroka. He has said that, “Often students will come to me and be like the machines broken, but after I get them to explain to me what happened, I can fix the issue they were having.” Meaning you should go to him if you have any questions or problems with the machine.
There are also other deeper problems that he and others are working on for the vending machine. Such as seeing if the robotics team can create more powerful modders to carry heavier drinks, like the liquid death they had to remove for this reason. Other classes, like the shop class, have also already helped the machine by creating a larger place to hold money so the machine can accept more cash, and people can buy from it without the slot overflowing. They also added foam padding to the bottom so the drinks would have somewhere soft to land.
The vending machine in all is a great addition to IBW and is loved amongst the student body. Although there are still some problems to figure out, it has had a very smooth welcome, and hopefully to contribute more in the future.
