Sophomore students often talk about the pressure of taking their driver’s test, but what they don’t discuss is the stress of whether staff members will be flanking the entrance to the gravel Carlisle parking lot.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, 16-year-old Californians, who are typically sophomores in high school, account for over 10 percent of teenage drivers. At Redwood, sophomore students are not allocated any on-campus parking spots.
Since the east (back) parking lot opened in November, the gravel parking lot contains dozens of open spaces that haven’t been permitted to juniors or seniors. These open spaces are convenient for newly licensed sophomores, not only due to sophomores’ potential inability to parallel park on sophomore row, but mostly because of the long, treacherous walks between Piper Park, sophomore row, and Redwood’s campus.
According to a schoolwide April Bark survey, 72 percent of sophomores who drive to school park on-campus without a permit. This data shows a disconnect between the school policy and student parking needs.
When a large majority of students are willing to risk receiving a ticket, being pulled out of class, and being towed, it shows how the inconvenience of parking off campus outweighs the risks of parking on-campus without a permit.
The only thing preventing sophomores from filling the available spaces are campus staff assistants. Monday through Friday, campus staff assistants Jay DeMaestri, Isaiah Howard and Amari Jones can often be seen checking cars entering and exiting Redwood’s on-campus parking lots before drivers can reach Doherty Drive.
According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an observable type of distraction (a visual stimulus that diverts someone’s attention) resulted in 68 percent of crashes, while external glances resulted in a crash risk 7.1 times higher than normal driving. The same article states that many of these distractions on the road result from the search for parking.
In an INRIX survey, 61 percent of Americans reportedly “feel stressed to find a parking spot,” and 23 percent of Americans “experienced road rage” due to lack of parking. This data demonstrates the importance of available parking for all students. If unpermitted students have to consistently search for off-campus parking, their risk of crashing increases alongside a potential increase in stress and road rage.
Instead of permitting available parking spaces to sophomores, the school chooses to enforce its strict parking policy in an effort to force students to park farther away from their classes. Across campus, sophomore students face punishment daily for trying to find sufficient parking solutions. Campus staff assistants have to take time out of their day to pull kids out of class and check cars for permits. The difficulty of this is reflected in the previously stated data of 72 percent of sophomores parking on campus without permits.
Although sophomores shouldn’t have the same parking priority as upperclassmen, ignoring this issue altogether is discriminatory by disregarding students’ needs. Rather than fighting a continuous battle against sophomore students finding loopholes for on-campus parking, should focus on a long-term solution that aids sophomore students with parking instead of preventing it.
A potential solution is using a lottery system similar to the one used to distribute parking spots among upperclassmen. Alternatively, a portion of the lots could be designated for unpermitted parking.
Implementing these solutions would provide sufficient parking for sophomore students who come to school early, without additional stress of campus staff members preventing them from finding a convenient parking spot.
