There’s nothing like a sturdy umbrella.  Finding one, however, is a shifty proposition.

At the beginning of the 2014-15 academic year – the first full year spent at the new Oxford High School – new umbrellas were added to the outside benches to provide shade for students during 90-degree weather.  

However the tables –or rather, umbrellas – outside the school’s cafeteria have turned, as the umbrellas are now breaking apart, no longer doing their job.

“The slats on the umbrellas broke, probably because they were not put down when it was windy,” Assistant Principal Duncan Gray said, speculating on how the umbrellas broke.

The umbrellas have been deemed unfixable, but may be exchanged later this year.

“They really aren’t repairable, but we may look at replacing a couple down the road,” Gray said.

Gray explained that he has asked students eating third lunch to put down the umbrellas in order to avoid having them break overnight due to strong winds. Gray feels that since the students have not done this properly, he does not know whether to replace the umbrellas yet.

“If we can’t take care of the umbrellas and put them down to avoid having them break, then it wouldn’t make sense to continue to replace items we don’t care for in the first place,” Gray said.

Said OHS junior Anne Catherine Gurner, “It’s not fair to the people who didn’t break them and who aren’t in third lunch to have to deal with them being broken.”

For now, three of the umbrellas will continue to be broken, but the situation isn’t a lost cause.

“It’s not that dangerous,” Sophomore Keelan Case said about sitting at a table with a broken umbrella.  “If I get bumped in the head, (the umbrella) is not that strong. It hasn’t fallen yet, so it hasn’t really bothered me.”