by Ryan Kohlhof

It’s no surprise at PCM: People are never happy with the parking lot. We have people who hog spots, spot stealers, there’s no room to maneuver and it’s always a mess.
“It’s not fair because people who show up late still get good spots, while some of the students that show up on time get stuck in the back.” junior Emily Hughen said.
Could it be worse, though? For the past five years now, the high school has had assigned parking spots for students. It used to be a first-come, first-serve type parking style, but that all changed when there were too many problems. Now people are assigned spots through a lottery system. Many parents have expressed gratitude for this more organized parking lot.
“Now, if there are any issues in the parking lot we can identify who that student is,” Principal Scott Bridges said. “For example, if a student leaves their lights on, we know who they are and can notify them. Another example is we recently had a snowstorm and students were not able to see the lines in the parking lot. There were lanes that were impassable. We identified the students by the parking tags and had them move their cars so there wouldn’t be a mess in the parking lot at the end of the day. One final example would be, if you notice a new door ding on your car door and it happened at school, you know who did it. The same person parks next to you every day.”
The first-come first-serve had plenty of problems, too. Simple complications couldn’t be solved because of the lack of knowledge of who owned each vehicle. The original parking was set up so the seniors parked in the front, the juniors had their spots next and the rest were for sophomores and freshmen. This posed simple conundrums such as where the “spots” changed from class to class. As in, a junior could be in the senior parking because of a lack of clear spot transition and then everyone gets upset about it, but nothing could be done. If you don’t like where you’re at, that’s too bad, as the assigned spots are here to stay.