Parking: is it really an issue?
October 4, 2010
By Caroline Devine
While most juniors and seniors are happy to drive, some are stressing over getting to school on time due to their parking spot. There are a total of 6 parking lots for students, some being a minute or two walk, and others up to 10 minutes.
This year more students are complaining in the halls about their assigned parking spot, but Officer Powers stated, “I don’t know of any parking issues that we have right now, last year we had a lot of parking issues, but I’m not aware of any now because I haven’t had any students come to me and complain about not having a spot to park.â€
Most of the students who are unhappy with their assigned parking spot are juniors who have to park in the K and J lots, which are the farthest lots from the school.  K lot is across from the lacrosse fields near Hopkins, while J lot is next to Field 10. “The thing about K and J, those parking lots are mainly for juniors, and juniors aren’t even supposed to park at school. Yes it’s a long walk, but they shouldn’t even be parking there anyway,†said Officer Powers, who stated that parking is mainly a senior privilege.
Sami Dwyer, a junior, unwillingly parks at K lot said, “The walk up from K lot absolutely stinks it just makes you feel gross after and it’s too long,†she also stated, “It’s not fair. They should fill up all other possible spots before and give closer spots to kids who drive everyday, not have spots for seniors who don’t have their license yet.â€
When asked his opinion on the K and J lot complaints, Mr. Jordan, a substitute teacher, stated “If students come in a little late, there should be some leeway. I’ve noticed traffic in the morning.â€
Connor Farrell, a junior, parks across the street at J. C. Parmenter, Inc. Farrell doesn’t have any complaints about it and says he parks there because it’s free and closer to the school than J lot.
So, is there really a parking issue or have HHS students become too lazy to walk?
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Courtney Shea • Nov 1, 2010 at 11:38 PM
I park in J lot and if i’m running a little late to school I just take Hope Trail which gets me to school a lot faster. The only problems are if there are extremely high or low temperatures or if it is raining, the walk can be really awful. I wish something could be done to fix this but apart from building more parking lots closer to the school, nothing could really be done. I hope someone comes up with an idea in the future!
Caroline, thank you for informing me about this article!
Katie Potenzone • Oct 5, 2010 at 10:07 AM
This is an interesting article. Parking has really only become an issue at the High School ever since they did away with assigned parking spaces. A friend of mine who graduated on ’04 said that she had an assigned parking space all through high school. Her space was #234, and that was her space all year, if someone parked in her space she could have them towed. For some reason a year or so after she graduated they did away with specific space parking rules. I think that having a specific space would fix many of the parking lot wars that occur. Especially now, the Junior and Senior classes at HHS are the biggest the school has ever seen, therefore parking can only be an issue. If every student had a numbered space assigned to them, there would not be an issue with finding a place to park therefore eliminating the reason for tardiness excuses pertaining to parking. Great article! Glad to hear that people are still complaining about parking!