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Our new principal, Donna Houser, wrote this article that originally appeared on the Trojan Times newsgroup at Yahoo!
As you are probably aware, a decision was made in the spring to discontinue the practice of assigning specific parking to seniors. What you may not be aware of are the reasons this decision was made. This is how it has been explained to me:
Seniors would wait over night to be assigned the closest parking spaces. The overnight ‘camping’ was not supervised by adults and in the morning there were beer bottles and other items left in the ‘camping’ area. There was concern about the lack of supervision for the ‘campers.’
Seniors who had first period off would often arrive to find that someone had parked in their space. Cars were keyed, egged, kicked, written on with magic marker, etc. Several confrontations were started from this sort of student interaction. Some seniors parked behind the car in violation preventing that student or parent from leaving until the senior decided to leave campus sometimes after practice or rehearsal. The building operator and the security monitors spent the better part of the morning dealing with complaints from seniors who had their spaces taken or other students who were angry that their cars had been damaged when they were just trying to get to class on time. As you can see, this has not been a workable situation so the decision was made in April to stop the practice of assigning senior parking. The parking lot would be first come, first served in order to protect cars and prevent student confrontations.
The senior class officers came to me in July and requested that we consider a compromise. They recommended a certain number of rows designated as senior rows not specifically assigned but reserved for the first seniors who got to school. There would be fewer spaces than seniors and that way they would all fill by first period. If a senior wanted a front space, he/she would have to get to school early. Otherwise, there would be sufficient parking, but in a spot that was empty somewhere in the general parking. The administration felt that this was a reasonable option to try and decided to label the second to fourth rows of parking (behind the coaches row of parking) in the student parking lot as senior parking (approximately 200 spaces). We have traditionally sold about 280 senior parking spaces in the past. When those rows fill up, any senior arriving on campus after that time will have to find parking in the general parking. If it is important for seniors to have a front space, then they need to get to school early. The senior rows of parking will be marked, seniors will have a special parking permit, and seniors will receive specially color-coded IDs to allow them to leave campus during the day. These efforts will help to ensure that only seniors are parking in senior spaces and that only seniors leave during the school day. If this works, then it is a win-win for all. If there is still conflict, then the parking lot will have to be open to the ‘first come-first served’ rule. Our first obligation is to the safety and harmony of the campus.
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