By Alok Ganguly & Kai-Lou Yue
Staff Writers

Due to the steady increase in the population of the senior classes over the past few years, the situation of parking spaces has been slowly becoming more of a problem.

According to dean Bob Ware who supervises the parking passes and lots, “[The administrators] are going to continue to do [their] best to monitor the situation, and make sure it’s equal opportunity for everybody, but it’s hard because our numbers are growing and more kids are driving to school these days, but our parking spaces are still staying the same.

Ware says there are approximately 300 available student parking spaces for seniors to park and 320 parking passes were sold to seniors this year.

In the Ghostwriter investigation, around 310 spots were found to be available to students, but during this winter, snow piles block several spaces. This winter in particular six spaces were blocked by the snow.

The lack of spots available to accommodate the large amount of students is a problem for Ware and seniors. This unavailability of space is caused by snow piles and several underclassmen who try to park on campus, even without having a parking pass.

“There’s that never ending battle of the underclassmen wanting to park on campus,” said Ware.

In order to make sure that underclassmen are caught when trying to park on campus, Ware has staged quick, random checks of the parking lots, making sure each car parked is there legally.

“Today I sent a student out to check the parking passes of all the cars out there,” said Ware.

Ware also said that there are new areas around campus which have been paved and made into areas for students to park, in the case that they do not have any available spots.

“I had to put people by the water treatment plant because all the parking places are full. I had to put people who weren’t handicapped in the handicapped parking spaces,” said Ware.

Students who cause these problems will be faced with serious consequences, and both seniors and underclassmen will be reprimanded for illegal parking.

“[If students are repeat offenders of parking in places they are not supposed to park], then their passes are taken away for anything from one to two weeks….[and if it’s an underclassman], then they lose their right to park here next year,” said Ware.

Seniors with passes are faced with difficulty when they come to school.

Senior Natalie Trainor said, “It gets really annoying if you come in later. You end up having to drive around for half an hour looking for a place to park.”

Ware sees the situation differently, saying “the early bird gets the parking spot.”

Ware is open to any ideas on how to fix the problem for future classes to make sure that students will always have an available spot to park.

“If you get a better solution, I’m open to suggestions,” said Ware.