With the seconds ticking down, you scamper hastily to beat the bell. As you round the corner with the classroom in sight, the audible snap of your ankles echoes through the hallway as you come face-to-face with a herd of grazing slackers. Desperately, you search for a way around the students deliberately blocking your passage to knowledge.

You try to shove past, but the thick aroma of cologne and failure block your path. As you finally squeeze through the band of hoodlums, the bell tolls and the door shuts. You, my friend, are late.

AHS has a population of roughly 2700, not including teachers. The school is severely over-populated and the consequences are apparent. We have come to accept this dilemma, but one problem in particular grinds our gears. This epidemic is known as “cloggers” and plagues the class routes in our school.

We have all experienced this problem as we navigate the winding halls of our school at some time in our four-year run.

Instituted as a form of hazing freshman, clogging has transformed into a school-wide crisis. All venues suffer from this congestion.

“All you need to do is gather as many friends as possible and scream WALL!” stated senior Pat Khoueiry.

Other AHS students are not as fond of this unique form of entertainment.

“It literally drives me up a wall,” senior Bob Stevens complained. “And I’m a senior!”

“They made me trip going up the stairs,” senior Katie Bui cried, “and didn’t even help me get up!”

As for the reason behind clogging, Khoueiry says, “It’s fun to see people [complain] and be late.”

The calamity that we call clogging has no real end in sight. Administrators blow whistles and move students aside to improve traffic flow, but there is no definite solution. To cope with clogging, students created various techniques on steering through the masses of stagnant youth.

“I’ve got two strategies,” claims Stevens. “The Bull Rush is where you just charge the pile and hope you make it through. But for those tricky blockades [of students], you need to slither your way through. I call that one the Salamander.”

Although tactics of combating this dilemma vary, one universal idea encompasses the school. Clogging must cease.