Sean Hogan
Staff Writer
With Schools having In-Person Learning again, Community accounts are emerging. Like sla_sleeps on Instagram. Which takes submissions of people sleeping in school. Some of the photos are clearly staged but some others are pretty funny. Like one of a student sleeping during a fire drill in the commons. Another of Mr. Symmonds sleeping on a bean bag. It’s a creative way of building community. But some people don’t want a photo of them sleeping in school on the internet. I reached out to the account to ask if they take down photos upon request. But I received no response
Personally, for me, I don’t ever want to be on this account. If I wanna take a nap or close my eyes for a bit I should be able to do that without a picture of me sleeping. I see no problem with an account like this but I think people should ask permission before they post or send.
Another one that recently started is slafoodreviews. Which reviews the food served in the cafeteria. With funny but also honest reviews about the food we are served. Like a burrito with fries and a pear, they said the fries are a 2 out of 10 because of them being cold. The Burrito 4/10 for being whole wheat, and the pear 9/10 for being healthy with the entire meal getting a 5/10. I think this is a funny way of telling people how the food being served is. Compared to sla_sleeps this account has more personality as someone is writing these reviews and making jokes about the food. There is a lot more effort, and it shows.
The Food served here isn’t as great of a quality as you would expect to come out of that huge kitchen. But some of the food tastes and looks really good. Such as the fresh slices of pizza. Also in defense of the food, Pennsylvania required that school lunches must comprise of whole or enriched grain, fruit, vegetable, meat/meat alternate, and fluid milk. And the state allows any means to prepare the food. In Elementary and Middle School, we were served frozen pre-packaged meals shipped to the school and heated up in the oven. Some of the food wasn’t bad. But some of them were what you would expect if you got frozen veggies, soggy and bland. And before the School District made school lunch free, you had to pay 5-10 Dollars for basically a TV Dinner.
Our School has the luxury to have a kitchen preparing meals mostly from scratch, for free. I really think the account brings a lot of these issues to light in a way that people can joke about and is not attacking the staff that prepares the food. Only giving criticism in a light-hearted way.
There is also the classic sla_philly_memes. Which started in 2019 after news broke about the asbestos in what then was the new building. Making light of that scary situation. Making jokes about the School Districts’ incompetence with the whole situation. Which for me was a real help in making me feel less stressed about the whole situation. As one of the memes was two people with hazmat suits on with the caption “new sla uniforms!!”. The memes continued up until August of 2021. Now the account is inactive.
So in the end, when are the community accounts acceptable? I would say that It depends. If they are light-hearted and not attacking anyone or featuring anyone without permission then yes it’s ok. Sla_philly_memes doesn’t really count because they were criticizing Dr. Hite, the School District, and Virtual SLA. These accounts can further strengthen the SLA community. With Community accounts being run by the community.
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