LOS ALAMITOS, Calif. — In 2022, the city of Los Alamitos invested $49,023,306 into the new LAHS Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics building, featuring three floors, complete with an elevator. In 2025, $30 million was spent on the new LAHS gym, The Griffin Center, and the world language building was also refurbished. While these new modern additions were desperately needed, students find themselves navigating two distinct environments: “old campus” and “new campus.”

Students cannot help but compare the two — and spot the differences. Prior to its renovation, the world language building was characterized by colorful artwork, littered with posters and promos, transporting students into a flurry of travel across Latin America, the Deaf community, Japan and France. Now, the walls remain mostly blank, waiting to be decorated. The STEM building contains similarly sterile walkways, its shiny new gem being the elevator. That said, an injury and certification of such via a doctor’s note is the only way for a student to be granted access to the elevator.

“It’s a practice, not a policy,” said LAHS Assistant Principal of Student Services and Attendance, Mr.Bowen, in explanation of the school’s approach towards student elevator access, as the school attempts to manage the liabilities of injured students from the over 3000 Griffins that roam the campus daily.

 In 2024, current LAHS senior Ethan Lee became dependent on the elevator after incurring an injury that forced him onto crutches. At the time, the elevator was experiencing technical issues, rendering it unusable.

“For a good week, I couldn’t even go to class. I just had to chill in the media center,” said Lee, who did not have access to a doctor’s note, nor another method of reaching the third story of the building.

Additionally, the supplement of a second gym creates opportunities for miscommunication, as events and directions require specifying their location — the old gym or the new gym. Communicating with such a large student body, composed of a generation that depends on Instagram notifications for their news and neglects their emails, is already strained. Information often must trickle through morning announcements, ASB, and when given access to their phones, combined with the miracle of good wifi and reception, students may text one another. 

On the other hand, the old gym necessitated split assemblies; now, the entire LAHS student population can gather for one assembly in the Griffin Center’s freshly installed bleachers and still-shiny court. The new gym also provides more space for LAHS athletics teams, allowing for consistency with practice and game schedules as well as locations. Lower-level teams that may have been assigned to secondary practice locations like the Oak Middle School gym or Laurel Park now have more room to practice on campus.

“Having two gyms has been such an upgrade. When boys’ basketball has game days, we can practice in the old gym instead of having to go somewhere else,” said LAHS girls varsity basketball player Lexi Kyriakos.

While there are certainly challenges to navigating the partially renovated LAHS campus, increased access and opportunities for athletics, academics, activities, and arts provided by the STEM building and the addition of The Griffin Center are undeniable. Students cannot be expected to perform at their full potential if they don’t have the resources to do so, and this campus does that while also reflecting the rapidly changing, modernized world that students are living in.