Ah, the old Lebanon Junior high, a wretched building that since my leaving has been demolished

by at least 80%, with the only part of it remaining to be something that absolutely couldn’t be
easily replaced. The Junior high was a sterile yet simultaneously dirty collection of hallways in
the shape of a deformed rib cage with 3 large tumors attached to it. During my 2 years in junior
high, I can with almost complete certainty say that it created a toxic and nearly dysfunctional
working environment that stems from factors such as the structure of the building itself to the
people within that building.
 
The building had one floor but on that one floor was comprised of at least 3 or 4 skinny hallways
peppered with lockers and rooms, an auditorium, a gym, and a cafeteria; all of which connected
someway to the wide and mostly worthless main hall. The main hall was about as long as half a
football field and served 2 purposes, to act as the main entrance and to separate the 2 sets of
skinny hallways by about half a mile. This one design decision is what made the building so
wretched. The main hallway is what could make or break your schedule. 
 
Between classes, this foul and wide walkway would be flooded by students rushing and
scurrying like roaches in a dirty kitchen trying to find their next scrap of food. It and the smaller
hallways formed lines of traffic-congested further than the snottiest child that could ever enter
the building. People would either be rushing fast enough to tackle a person in an effort to dash
across the entire building or they would move at a snail’s pace and block others, or if they were
in some social clique they would form an impassable wall of idiocy that further worsened the
trek between rooms. 
 
Of course, these issues could be considered products of the environment the school’s design
created, with such a long main hall you would be forced to run between classes if you wanted to
get there on time. There was major pressure to get to class on time considering that you could
face repercussions for being tardy like most other schools. While just getting from one class to
another would cause a rush, the need to change out your school supplies or use the bathroom
would put further pressure on speed between bells. These issues could spill into instructional
time as you could end up being late, or you could end up desperately needing to use the
bathroom when you should be working. While some teachers understood this issue, others did
not care, festering a bit of loathing among some students.
 
The smaller halls had to front-load all of the classrooms and lockers, while the main hall mostly
sat empty, only really being as wide as it was to accommodate having the main office next to the
auditorium and the gym. The only thing I can recall ever being stored in the main hall itself was
a pencil dispenser and worthless trophies held in a case outside the gym. The fat hall only existed
to sit there and take up space, hindering everyone who walked through it. The entire building had
a tendency to cramp, seemingly unable to contain 2 grades of students, made more ridiculous
considering the building was initially constructed as a high school meant to house double that
amount.
 
The oversized main hall only ever really existed to separate the standard academic classes from
the arts and athletics part of the building. All of the academic courses had a room per teacher,
these rooms looked generally the same, the only real difference in most of the rooms was how
much it looked like a broom closet. Many rooms lacked any windows while also lacking
adequate lighting to make up for it. Most rooms that weren’t made for the arts were cramped,
being cluttered by small desks and crammed in bookshelves. Every desk or chair seemed to have
an uncomfortable wobble to them, if you leaned on either one too hard there would be a constant
clacking noise as its unstable legs repeatedly tapped the concrete floor. While the rooms
dedicated to the arts were larger, many had similar problems, the choir room had a similar
isolated feeling with sterile lighting and chairs that constantly broke. 
 
The classrooms being in a state similar to a dirty broom closet did not exactly motivate one to
work hard. Everything about most of them would bring discomfort and likely slow the work of
some students, or just made them physically ache. Maybe it should have been obvious that
putting someone in an environment where almost everything is in disrepair would lead to a
constant feeling of frustration within the student body. Though with the context of the building
being in use for almost 50 years (serving 35 of those as a high school rather than a junior high) It
almost seems obvious that the building would be as run-down as it was.
 
Other parts of the building were what you would expect from an American high school, dirty
floors, some nonfunctioning lights, corners that collected dust, overstuffed lockers, and
disgusting bathrooms which had conditions that worsened as the school year progressed. By the
end of the year, I recall the men’s bathroom having stall doors broken in 3 different ways and
fecal matter ending up on surfaces once thought unimaginable. I do not recall the scribbles on the
walls of the Junior high bathroom as much as I recall the ones from high school but they were
most certainly there, likely having some disparaging or idiotic statement written on them. Most
disgusting were the toilets themselves, the flusher rarely ever being touched, causing many
bowls to be filled to the brim with feces that could have been sitting for either a few minutes to a
couple of hours.
 
Something should be said about how most students would rather slack off in the shit-smeared
and sewer-scented bathroom than actually do their work in class. Was the foul environment of
the bathrooms somehow preferable to the environment of the classroom or did the students just
not care about their work so much that they were fine with the stench? 
 
Another thing to note is that the whole district was always sports-focused, seen at all levels of
schooling, the junior high being no exception. A football field and 2 baseball fields were located
across the mile-long parking lot of the building, each taking up about as much surface area as
half of the main building. The fields would always be in pristine condition despite the
deterioration present in the actual building. The only part of the building itself which didn’t
suffer as much was the gymnasium and the workout room connected to it. Funnily enough, doing
sports or taking gym classes in junior high didn’t count towards getting your high school
diploma like other electives.
 
Now even though there was all of this funding going to the athletic field, the school had a
constant issue with funding. There were constant fundraisers and attempts at getting tax levies so
that the school system as a whole could get better equipment. The first thing that usually got
improved however seemed to be the athletics department, always seeming to have new gear or
new balls. The best improvement the Junior high could scrounge up, was it being entirely
replaced with a completely new building(a couple of years after I was already in high school
mind you).
 
However, despite the expenditures on athletics, the locker room was abysmal. It was smaller than
most of the already small classrooms and was dirtied with sweat and the pungent smell of ax
body spray. Even more perplexing was the decision to give the room a carpet, a carpet which
likely absorbed all the sweat and fluids of anyone who used the room, probably accumulating
mold and adding to the wretched smell of the room. The gym lockers also were insecure,
requiring students to bring their own locks; a bad move considering many students had no issue
with thievery, I recall having the lock stolen off my gym locker within the 2nd day of the class.
 
Speaking of the students, they comprise the other half of the people who contributed to the
building’s poor state. Most students were generally lacked any sort of empathy towards their
fellow man and were also exceedingly self-centered. If I’m recalling statistics I’ve heard
correctly, the whole district was known for being an astounding example of America’s bullying
and racism epidemics. The evidence of these issues could be seen more evidently in the high
school but was also present within the junior high. I can’t personally address the racism issues
(though you can most certainly find information about that) however I can with 100% certainty
say that 80% of the student body was comprised of genuinely horrible people and the
administration could do nothing (or would do nothing) to fix this.
 
Aside from acting like degenerates towards their peers, their actions contributed to the physical
deterioration of the building. They left trash in the halls, many would steal from each other, and
the desks and bathroom stalls would suffer frequent abuse. The damage to the stall doors was
entirely caused by students hanging off the doors for their own entertainment. The imbalanced
desks and chairs were the cause of them being rocked back and forth for days on end. The
majority of the students had a general apathy for practically anything and everything that didn’t
have to do with themselves.
 
I can barely recall most of the students within the school since they all blend together into an
indistinguishable blob of figures which I feel a general venom towards. Most of the guys at the
school who contributed to the general issues of the place were oversized sports players who
disregarded their work and snorted protein powder. The girls which participated in being
generally awful people were practically walking stereotypes about preppy high school girls. Both
of these groups would continue to act this way into their high school years and would not only
harass their fellow classmates in various ways but would also stoop to publicly teasing the
mentally handicapped (I am dead fucking serious on that). 
 
It was likely that if the building itself wasn’t creating some kind of hostile environment that
inhibited your learning ability, the other students would make it one. Being generally disruptive
and loud during most hours of the day, stealing things they didn’t need or even want. Taking up
the attention of staff with their antics would on occasion get the entire class punished. Most
detrimental however was when group projects were assigned, which would lead to one or more
students not doing any of the work, leaving the weight of the project on everyone else.
 
Most of the teachers who worked at the junior high just had to put up with the disruptions of the
problem kids. Most were adequate at their jobs, generally being helpful if you need assistance on
your work with only a few exceptions to this. There were some who were far less understanding
of an individual student's problems, however, I can see why one may not always be so
understanding when dealing with the student body of Lebanon.
 
For a short period after I left that building it remained up until the new Junior high could be
completed. For a short while after that, it still remained, but only as a way to temporarily hold
intermediate school classes as the building they normally used was being renovated to have
proper air conditioning and other new technology. After the renovations were done most of the
building was ripped apart, the auditorium and by extension some of the main hall remaining due
to it being the only one in the school district. Effectively half of the building was left in place, a
shadow of its former self, however, the hatred of it still remains. 
 
While I am not certain of the status of the new Junior high, I can without a doubt say that the old
junior high left one with an unsatisfactory work environment. I don’t remember much about
what I learned in that place, all that I remember is how much I hate the building or the people or
the toilets or some other thing wrong with it. Whether or not you got a passable learning
experience was effectively up to luck. Did you get a good teacher? Where was the classroom
located? Who got into your class? Where was your locker located in relation to the class? Where
was the Bathroom in relation to the class? How old are the school supplies? It was extremely
likely that you could get a bad setup on at least 3 of these factors, Leading to your education
being generally worse.