With semester two right around the corner, school parking is a topic of discussion among Algonquin students.
Just a few short years ago, the Algonquin administration decided to establish a numbered parking system in which students would now have their own designated spots. Additionally, this past year they began enforcing yet another rule: students are not allowed to park in the rotunda lot.
According to Principal Sean Bevan and Assistant Principal Andrew McGowan, the idea for assigning parking spots spurred from an issue with students leaving the building without signing out. They needed a way to incentivize students to stay at school and monitor those students who leave as a part of ensuring school safety.
While the system may seem beneficial for staff and administrators, in reality, it is not great for students, being inconvenient and unfair. In fact, allowing students to choose where to park every day would be a far better alternative for students.
One major drawback to having fixed, numbered parking spots is that it does not allow students to park at the most convenient locations. While numbered spots might work well if each day started and ended with the same classes, the reality is our schedule does not provide such a convenience. For instance, some days, students may want to park in the H200 lot because they either have a first or last-period class there and wish to leave quickly.
Some students may argue that having a designated spot ensures that you can have peace of mind knowing you have a spot to park and not worry about finding an open spot. While this is a nice luxury, even with the new policies in place, occasionally a student will take your spot. Even with the freedom of where to park, friends will end up parking in the same spots routinely and so the difference of having a painted number or not becomes far less noticeable.
Finally, a major drawback of the new policy is that students now get to ‘claim’ their parking spots by getting to school the earliest to register for parking at the end of the summer. This process leaves lots of students who bypassed this process for whatever reason having to choose from a small number of parking spots in less desirable areas. It would make more sense to have these parking spots ‘claimed’ by those who get to school the earliest, and let routines and time decide the more permanent parking configurations after the first few weeks of school.
The most difficult argument to surpass is that of the administration and student safety. One of the main reasons this new policy was put in place was to make it easier to monitor attendance and prevent students from slipping out of school without anyone noticing. While this argument is valid, it does not necessarily mean that the system is perfect. Students will always find a way around the rules and so why should we be ‘punishing’ the majority of rule-abiding students with such a parking policy?
The best system for students would be to do away with the numbered, designated parking spots and allow students to choose where to park every day.
