Students walk to their classes, stacks of books in their arms. Very few stop at the lockers that line the hallways. They walk with a posture more suited for a 90-year-old than a teenager, and the hunched backs are all caused by carrying too many things in their backpack.

Books from classes one to eight are all piled inside, along with lunch boxes and heavy coats. Some even carry a second backpack if they don’t have a place to drop off the additional sports bag.

But why not put it in lockers? The solution seems simple, yet there is a reason why students can’t make the trip to their metal cubbies.

“The locker is far away, so I don’t even bother to go to my locker to go get my things. I just carry my things with me the entire day,” said Lilibeth Arriga, who is a senior at Wayne Hills. The way her schedule is structured makes it difficult to make a trip to the lockers.

Many other people deal with the same issue, choosing to lug the backpack all around the school, often climbing up and down the stairs every other class.

“I never have time to go. Besides, my locker always gets stuck. They’re unreliable,” said Moksha Madupuru, a sophomore at Hills.

So what’s the solution for students? To visit their lockers during lunch? To strategically find a time in the schedule to visit lockers? Is it possible, or even worth it?

Yes it is, says one student.

“It’s like a closet at school. It can be used for anything, like your lunch, projects, books, jackets,” said Alexis Gentile, a sophomore at Hills. She frequently uses her locker because it’s close to one of her classes.

Her backpack is also noticeably less heavy.

But the population of locker-users is still in the minority, as students are starting to deal with the added weight of jackets and hoodies.

“I guess it’s just a matter of a lot of factors. Some people will just bother with it more than others. But most of us just want to get to classes,” said Noor Rana, a sophomore.

With additional surveying, it’s pretty obvious that not many use their lockers. A surprising amount of students haven’t even tried looking for it. Lockers are just an additional resource, not an essential part of the day.

So while the universal backdrop of high school is lockers, it seems that their use doesn’t go much beyond storing a whole lot of dust.