By Molly Gawthrop, Staff Writer
The River Hill High School school parking lot can be a crazy place at 7:20 AM or 2:10 PM, with new drivers trying to avoid being late or trying to beat the buses when the dismissal bell rings. Even with all of the hectic energy of the students, it seems that parents are set on using the student parking lot as a shortcut (or maybe a “long” cut) to pick up their high schooler.
Parents have been seen taking the student lane into the school, even going as far as cutting off the drop-off line completely, which causes a lot of uproar from River Hill students. The plan seems to be to go into the student parking lot to either park as a student would or to go by the gym entrance. This becomes problematic with an overflow of traffic and only one entrance.
Cutting the dropoff line seems to upset a lot of students who are in a hurry, but do the parents really make an impact on parking lot traffic, or do they just hold the blame?
Senior Alli Radcliffe is very passionate about her disdain for the “cutters” saying “And you know what, it’s the parents, not even the children [that are causing these problems].”
She elaborates, “When you are trying to go in at the beginning of the day, there are parents who are coming out because they drop their kids off at the gym doors so they don’t have to be in the car drop-off line, and then they take all of the space going out so nobody can get it. It takes so long.”
Alli also claims the same thing happens at the end of the day, holding up traffic and making it more difficult for students to leave.
Senior Effy Mangesha backs this up by saying, “Yeah, when you merge once you turn into the school, the cars for the drop-off makes it difficult for students to get into the parking lot.”
Although parents seem to have a lot of impact on the flow of traffic to and from school, as far as students go, Alli believes that students do not know how to follow the “zipper” when leaving, “And people pretend to not see you so they don’t have to let you in.”
When asked whether it was a design error or a user error, Alli says, “I think it is both… the design isn’t fantastic cause there is only one entrance… but I think since everybody is kinda going every man for themselves trying to get out first it screws everything up”
Senior Grace Dillion supports this theory, “The entrance cannot accommodate all of the students who drive to school, adding parents into the mix makes things complicated in the morning.”
Factors including the design: only one entrance or user error: lack of courtesy, combine to create a very stressful environment for high schoolers at River Hill.