Rules of the Parking Lot: Safe or Too Severe?

The new rules prohibiting students from loitering in the parking lot during the school day has created both opposition and praise.

While student opinion largely sides with the former, the school administration constantly speak in defense of rules.

The basis for such defense aligns itself within these categories: shooter safety, decreasing substance usage and abuse, and incentivizing students to attend classes.

However, popular student opinion doubts the verity of these motives. While I am sympathetic toward the students, I side with the administration.

It is understandable that a student may leave a crucial assignment in his or her car upon its due date, as I have been in this position, myself.

Hopefully, however, students will soon adapt to this new policy – whether this means adopting new organizational systems or keeping digital copies of assignments.

While the inconvenience this policy may bring about is understandable, its motives are as well.

Each reason for the policy’s invocation regards either student safety or student education, and these are the two primary concerns within the education system.

With school shootings in the news in the past decade, there is a general, increased awareness of the question: “What would I do if that were me?”

In the event of an on-campus security threat, safeguards have been put into place by the teachers and the administration.

We practice getting to safety in active-shooter drills. These safeguards, however, are best carried out when students can make their way to a classroom. If students are in the parking lot, the execution of these safety precautions become significantly more difficult.

As celebrity overdoses and the national opioid crisis are making headlines, on-school substance abuse concerns are valid.

With anti-vaping messaging intertwined with yearly school seminars, anti-drug use posters and pamphlets in the health office, and security guards checking bathrooms for substance use not discouraging students, stronger precautions become necessary. The monitoring of parking lots is a logical next step.

Class attendance, as well, is a logical concern. As a senior, myself, I know of the reality of senioritis. While students will always find a way to keep from attending classes, the new parking regulations will provide assistance.

Personally, I will soon (hopefully) be attending college, and the new freedoms of college will make it more difficult to bring myself to attend class.

If, however, I establish the habit of staying on campus for each of my classes in high school, I will be prepared to do so next year. This habit will be far easier to form with the assistance of the newly in-place regulations.

As a student, I empathize with my peers who mourn the loss of their freedoms.

However, I see the administration’s stance and can comprehend the necessity for intervention on their part, as these rules were established to form long-term learning habits. The rules do not intend to bring about suppression, but, rather, preparedness.