Every year, thousands of Texas students take the STAAR. For some, it is an already stressful time, with all of the standard rules and regulations. On test day, the teacher is reduced to a robot that can only repeat the lines fed to them on the administration forms. Pencil is put to paper as the 30-something students in the testing room scratch at their answers sheets.

And then, out of the blue, a lone student walks to the front of the room. He sits down at the large, rectangular desk near the door. He opens one of the many lunchboxes littering the table, pulls out a bag of Cheddar Whales, and begins to enjoy his snack, the munches sounding like little firecrackers in the silent room as dozens of eyes stare back from the occupied rows of seats.

In my STAAR experience this year, a major problem was the snack policy. In previous years, students were allowed to have snacks tucked under their desks, ready for whenever hunger arose. This time however, to “keep the tests clean” as my administrator put it, my classmates and I were made to pile up our goodies on a central table in the class, able to access them only if we ate there, in front of the class.

To no one’s surprise, very few people touched their snack during the test. Nobody wanted to be the only person in the room crunching away at their granola bar while everyone else sat silent. Only after the test was over, when people were allowed to bring their things back to their desk, did the rest of the class eat their snacks.

This silently caused quite a bit of anxiety for everybody testing. Logically, five hours without eating anything made people hungry. But also, the monotony of the test, with no snack to take a break from things, could get someone rushing through without focusing the best they could. Overall, that could even mean a reduction in scores.

A solution would be to bring back the old snack rule. If students were allowed to have their snacks at their seats, it would give them a little break from the anxiety of their work, along with something to prevent them from going hungry over the five-hour period. Besides, how much can cracker crumbs “soil” a test? Personally, I would be more concerned about the water. So should we, as a class, be quietly creeping to the front of the room every 10 minutes for a sip?