Every year, Seniors have had the option to be placed in a lottery for a spot in the senior parking lot. After a whole year of parking on the street, seniors are eager to roll in right before the bell rings at the most convenient spot on Bernards’ campus.

Seniors have enjoyed the privilege of parking in the parking lot, but juniors are not too thrilled with where they have to park. For years it has always been up to the seniors to park in the lot on Olcott. While parking on the street is hard enough for new drivers, it is becoming harder and harder to find parking on the street.

Junior, Ava Demarco, who got her license in September, said that “as the year goes on more and more people get their licenses so it becomes a lot harder to get a spot and because of that you have to leave your house earlier in the morning.”

Last year many seniors did not find this an issue because many students were parking in the library parking lot. This helped the street from becoming too congested and opened up a lot of spots on the street. In April of 2022, Dr. Neigel made an announcement stating that any student who were to park in the library parking lot would face severe consequences.

After the juniors last year started parking on the street, Senior, Lexi Shafer said, “I had to get to school thirty minutes before school started to get a decent spot.”

This is especially inconvenient for students who live in Bedminster, Far Hills, Peapack, and Gladstone who live more than 10 minutes from the high school. It forces students to get up earlier, which can negatively impact students’ sleep schedules.

To fix this issue many think it would be a smart idea for juniors to be offered the open spots in the parking lot. Not every senior has their license or drives to school and considering that the class of 2023 is extremely smaller than other senior classes in the past, there are multiple open spots in the senior parking lot.

Ava says “I think it would be cool if they took the spots that are not filled and offer them out to the juniors that get their license earlier in the school year like myself.”

While it would help the parking on the street, senior says, “although it would be nice for juniors to get parking spots, it wouldn’t be fair to juniors who get their license later in the year.”

Senior Lexi Shafer says, “juniors should get these spots. The risk of getting into an accident in the parking lot is high enough without adding brand new drivers.”

Although offering parking spots to juniors would be highly beneficial to the juniors parking on the street, it wouldn’t be fair to juniors who get their license later in the year and to juniors who had to struggle to find a spot in previous years. Despite the search for a solution to parking on the street, juniors are very lucky to be able to park at a spot that is rather close and to be able to drive to school.