Picture this: you finally make it to school after a treacherous journey through the blistering cold. You are all bundled up with your Super Puff zipped to your nose. You walk through two sets of glass doors and wish Eddie a good morning. Then there is a sudden, intense rise in temperature. As you ascend the atrium steps, your once-shivering body quickly becomes overheated. You frantically rip off your coat, trying to regulate your body temperature. You gather yourself. Now what? Where do you put the oversized puffer that is currently in your arms? 

This is a dilemma faced by all Heschel students. Yet, there is a simple solution: second and third-floor lockers are a perfect spot for jackets. The junior class, whose lockers are on the fifth floor, is not so lucky. A trek that high up the building can rarely be afforded, given the time constraint to get to tefillah before 8:00 am. Even If you did have time, few can spare the energy.

There are a couple of options for those of us with fifth-floor lockers. Schlepping your coat around from class to class all day is an option, though inconvenient and uncomfortable. If you get to school early enough, there may be open hangers in the first-floor coat room. This isn’t the best option, though, as the hangers are a thin, slippery metal that inevitably leads to weighty puffers ending up on the floor. And if a puffer hung in the coat room is fated to end up on the ground, why not spare yourself the detour and join me every morning in tossing my coat in a pile on the floor in the lounge? 

One step up from the lounge floor would be the short-lived jacket oasis of Jonathan Klatt’s coat rack, which he let needy students use. Recently, however, the coat rack met an untimely demise, most likely due to overcrowding: The coat rack toppled over and snapped in two. Klatt’s coat rack was regrettably rendered useless. 

After the tragic coat rack accident, junior Tessa Mank, who reported feeling lost when it came to finding a home for her coat, turned to her community. Senior Eva Unger helped Mank in her time of need, and let her leave her jacket in Unger’s coveted second-floor locker. This was only a temporary solution for Tessa and her teal Super Puff, as Ungar, who needed the space for her personal belongings (allegedly her yoga mat), had to revoke Mank’s locker privileges. Now, once again, Mank has joined the junior class in their search for jacket storage.