Students walk inside the classroom, inhale, scrunch their noses, and gag. As another day of school starts, students prepare to fight against the gross distractions. Whether its formaldehyde, dead cats and sharks, or burning Bunsens, there is always something strange wafting to your nose from the Science hallways.

Strange smells are certainly distracting to students “across the board,” as science teacher Robert Novak said, but they don’t make a big impact on the teachers who have their fair share of stench all day long.

“I don’t smell it at all anymore at all,” science teacher Alisha Crouch said. She continued, “They are distracting to my Freshmen that I have in the morning. They’re always like ‘What’s that smell?? It smells bad in here!’ But then they get used to it. They wouldn’t admit it.”

Everybody notices those infamous signs, “Sorry about the smell, it’s Shark Week.” These signs appear every year, but the problem persists. What people don’t see in the hallways is the mold in the sharks that started growing last year. Mold can trigger an asthma attack. This is too dangerous for the asthmatic students, not to be dealt with.

“It’s annoying and disgusting,” sophomore Zac Seale said.

Fans and open windows for ventilation, or “gigantic super-duper high-velocity fans” as Novak said he would prefer, Glade TM to replace ventilated smells, and an aware populous are all ways to help the problem. If there isn’t ventilation in the hallways as well as classrooms it becomes a health issue. Lab safety is a condition in the classroom. If the effects of a lab are spreading to the hallways, lab safety must also spread.

“You don’t even want to walk down the hallway ‘cause it smells so bad,” senior Alyssa Haigood said. “You just want to avoid it at all costs.”

These smells affect everyone from students to teachers. “Find a way to get rid of the smell,”freshman Aubrie Barrett said.