The start of the 2023-2024 school year brought a fresh wave of seniors ready and excited to finally be parking in the senior lot. However, this moment of celebration was frequently cut short by surprise guests who frequent the lot.

“There’s always someone parked right next to my spot picking up their kid at the end of the day,” senior Norah Smith said. “I swear it’s always a different person.”

To someone who parks elsewhere, running into a parent every now and then may not sound like an issue at all, but this trend creates unplanned inconveniences for senior lot regulars. Students are not supposed to be dropped off or picked up in the senior lot. This is due to our school’s Kiss-n-Ride drop-off and pick-up being in the new lot that is accessed by entering the school just to the north of the Academy.

“The way my spot is like, I kind of overshoot sometimes,” Smith said. “When that car is next to me, I have to figure out how to get around them to get into the [exit] line.”

Thankfully for the seniors, administration has noticed and taken measures to try and stifle this issue. On the mornings of Oct. 5 and 6, the farther entrance to the senior lot was open only for people with a parking pass to enter, and those without were stopped and questioned by a crossing guard stationed there. The same applies during afternoon dismissal.

However, the new entrance rules aren’t a catch-all fix. Senior Charlie Lamb, whose spot is on the right end of the lot by the sidewalk, is now more burdened after the change than before it.

“Sometimes there used to be like one or two [parent] cars in the morning, and I just had to wait a minute for them to pass or something, but it’s not really that big a deal,” Lamb said. “Now I have to go into the second entrance to the senior lot, and from there you can go straight or take that first left turn, which is much more convenient to get to my spot. … I had to go all the way around, and then I had to turn my car at a much more tricky angle.”

Lamb also made a note of his uphill battle with getting to track practice at the end of the day, due to the cones blocking that small entrance to the right of his spot.

“Normally I can just pull out to the right and go around since the traffic is going left, but now all the traffic’s going the same way that I have to go,” he said.

One of our security guards, Mr. Shannon Harrigan, sees the flaws with the solution.

“There’s always going to be a hiccup here and there. We’d rather a little hiccup with students than parents parking in their spots,” Mr. Harrigan said. “If we had more manpower, we could definitely come up with something better.”

At the end of the day, Mr. Harrigan is fine with simply making the flow of traffic smoother.

“My job is to reiterate to parents that there’s a Kiss and Ride down the street,” he said. “We just want people to communicate and make sure people know where to park.”