War on parking breaks out over baseball lot

Two weeks ago, Senior Senate decided to make the parking lot near the baseball field into a seniors-only lot. This change has sparked protests by the juniors who formerly parked in the lot, as well as several who have decided to continue parking there.

Senior Senate member Emma Pollock said, “The seniors expressed their frustration with the general lack of parking spaces... the whole idea is to have an easily regulated senior-only parking area and the baseball lot was just the best fit we could agree on.”

Lately there has been a lot of frustration from the seniors about juniors parking in the senior-only rows of the junior/senior lot, which is what motivated the discussion. The senate’s original idea was different than what actually happened though.

“One idea was to make the baseball lot junior-only so as to have more space in the junior/senior lot,” said Pollock. “But the administration thought it would be best if it was senior-only so the seniors would have their own separate space.”

As of right now however, it seems the new policy has backfired. Many juniors are protesting vehemently, several seniors remarked after hearing the change that they’d rather park in the junior/senior lot regardless, and on the first day of the change, around twenty parking spaces in the baseball lot were left unfilled. There have been about ten open spaces in the lot each day the rest of the week.

Several juniors have started a formal petition against this new policy, saying the baseball lot was majority juniors before, and asking where the juniors who previously parked there are supposed to park now.

“I was particularly upset about this situation because we signed the parking pass form granting us permission to use the baseball lot,” said Junior Tyler Thieding, who created the petition.

Thieding got over fifty signatures on the petition, which protests the decision to make the baseball lot seniors-only. He and several others are attempting to get the lot changed back to juniors and seniors.

On a different note, a little further in the future, Dr. Paul Milcetich said, “...we did receive another suggestion from a student about color coded parking passes next year for the junior/senior lot, the baseball lot, and the sophomore lot.”

If that idea is carried out next year, many of the current parking problems would be solved. Each student would have the opportunity to buy a pass to which lot they prefer and would know where they can park without worrying so much about leaving early in the morning.

Assistant Principal Brian Brookhart talked with Thieding and myself this week to address the problem. He said the parking issue will likely be marked down as a “failed experiment,” and the baseball lot will be switched back to seniors and juniors on November 20. It looks like this problem will be driving away soon.