As the school year has started and the upperclassmen population has increased, the parking lot has gotten more chaotic. In the morning, the lot is full of students parking, getting dropped off and being checked by security for parking passes.

“You need to get there by at least 7:30 to get a spot and avoid the traffic,” senior Lucas Masiello said.

Even though the lot is busy in the morning, arriving at the lot after school is where students often face a harsher reality. It’s not unusual for students to have to walk back to the lot after a long day of school to see damage to their car.

“This year after 7th period I came back to my car and saw scratches on my car,” Masiello said.

Since this senior class is one of the biggest in history, it‘s harder to get a parking pass this year. There were about 300 applications submitted compared to just over 200 spots in the parking lot. The parking passes weren’t enforced until the third week of school, so a lot of chaos in the parking lot was caused by students without parking passes.

“One time someone was backing out and they almost hit me and they didn’t have a parking permit,” senior Niklas Avillo said.

A popular thing students do when they are late to school is park on the curb because there are no spots left.

“When people park on the curb it makes it difficult for everyone to leave the lot after school and causes traffic,” senior Braden LaChapelle said.

Since some students who don’t own passes still park in the lot, this causes some people to lose their spot and park on the street.

Not only are there issues in the student lot, but there are also problems in the staff lot.

“There aren’t enough parking spaces for teachers. Also, ’administrator parking spots’ should not exist separately from ‘staff spots,’ in my opinion,” English teacher Adam Zeitlin said.

When students park in the staff lot or in the student lot without a parking pass, they are given a ticket by security.