Novice sixteen and seventeen year old drivers fill the Archmere parking lot every morning and flood out every afternoon. Who wouldn’t want to park next to their friends 30 minutes before school? And who wouldn’t want to leave as soon as the bell rings? What is portrayed as an exhilarating new privilege to new coming licensed drivers, quickly turns into a dramatic safety hazard. 

Novice drivers tend to drive too fast or recklessly in the student parking lot. An Archmere student, who wants to remain anonymous, explains how they felt when their car got hit in the parking lot. The traumatized student exclaims, “All I heard was a crunch and my stomach dropped I didn’t even know what happened yet then I looked in my mirror and saw the car sunk into my bumper.” This student was parking and a novice driver still managed to hit the bumper of their car. This isn’t the first accident in the Archmere parking lot, and it sure isn’t the last.

What’s a parking lot without bad parking?

  Student led instagram account named “auksflynotpark” reflects students’ notorious parking skills. Whether you’re out of the lines, diagonal, on the curb or crashed into another person’s vehicle; chances are you’re on that account!

Not only are accidents, speeding and bad parking a problem in the auks parking lot, but parking gets tricky as well. A rule that goes without saying: Seniors park in the front of the lot, closest to the buildings, and juniors park towards the back near the fields. Sometimes, when juniors go against this rule, the seniors become enraged. One senior, wishing to be kept anonymous, was fuming after she came to school and saw a junior parked in her regular spot. The senior exclaimed, “Who does this junior think they are? Stealing my spot? Their place is in the back”. Still boiling with emotions, the senior causing a ruckus, calling over the junior and telling them to stop parking there. This angry senior is not the only one experiencing rage over ignorant juniors. Another senior, also wishing to be kept anonymous, placed a sticky note on the car of a junior who parked in the senior section. The sticky note notified the junior of their disgraceful rulebreak and hopefully, the auk received the message. 

Luckily, nothing has gotten violent. 

This leads to the question students and faculty have debated over years. “Should students have assigned parking?” This debate may continue onwards for years.