design & photo credit: Lincoln Hake
Parking at the high school can prove to be trying at times, as the property has limited space for student parking. Whether it be getting to school earlier to find a better parking spot or taking 10 minutes to get out of the lot after school, students have complaints about parking.
Olentangy and Olentangy Liberty high schools were able to paint assigned parking spots over the summer, making Olentangy Orange students feel they deserved the same. In movies and on social media, teens see people painting their senior spots, creating a sense of anticipation in Orange’s senior class. This feeling is only accentuated because of the competitive nature of getting a decent spot each day with such a large school population.
“Parking at Orange is ridiculous,” senior Ava Huffman said. “We do not have enough spots for all the seniors. There are more than 500 people in the senior class, and we should invest in reserved parking. Especially at the end of the year when the underclassmen start driving, it just gets out of hand.”
This wasn’t the case a few years ago though. Sophomores used to have to wait six months after they got their license to drive to school because parking was so limited.
Now it is a free-for-all, which often leads to the youngest students being closer than anyone else. This frustrates upperclassmen because they have had to park further back and feel it is their right to park closer since they are older.
“Seniors should get assigned parking spots because we’ve been here the longest. Plus, a lot of us have late arrival, and by the time we get to school there are no spots in the main lot so you’d have to drive all the way to the sophomore lot in the back, which isn’t fair. We should have painted parking spots because other schools in the district have them,” seniors Michelle Li and Aimen Chaudary said.
However, the parking situation should improve for seniors as new Principal Monica Asher and the Senior Class Cabinet worked to instill more senior privileges when it comes to parking. In a senior assembly on Sep. 13, Asher introduced new privileges for seniors including painted parking spots. Senior Class Cabinet member Leila Glass introduced the initiative.
“It was an idea presented at the Senior Class Cabinet’s first meeting. There had been a whisper about it over the past couple of years, but I felt really inspired by it and seeing other schools do it. Therefore, I decided to take charge and make the idea come to life,” Glass said.
Seniors had the opportunity to stay after school on Sep. 21 to purchase a parking spot which they could paint and have reserved to them throughout the rest of the year. Many hoped it would help them get a closer spot, especially if they weren’t in the school much. The idea proved incredibly popular, and the seniors created a line which wrapped around the commons.
“I only have one period at school, and I often found that all spots were taken by students that got there first thing in the morning. I did think that it would be interesting for things to change,” Glass said.
Asher, who was principal at Chagrin Falls High School outside of Cleveland, established other senior traditions when it came to parking.
“We did not get painted parking spots [at my old school]. However, we did have different lots, like a blue or yellow lot, and seniors got the priority of choosing where they parked. There’s concern about there being some kind of unintended consequences, and there might be, but why not try. If there’s a problem, we can figure out a creative solution. It was something that was really important to kids,” Asher said.
Making accommodations that fit all students can be hard, but students hope to see more privileges in the future similar to how parking is changing for seniors.
