Students are privileged each year with the opportunity to purchase a parking pass for the student lot. With this, you are guaranteed a spot every day, don’t have to wait for a bus and maybe even get to sleep a few extra minutes. Unfortunately, you are also guaranteed borderline dangerous conditions during winter months.
Let’s face it: we are all basically still learning how to drive. Pennsylvania weather gives students plenty of chances to practice driving in the snow. When the roads are covered in snow and ice, there’s a high likeliness of a two-hour delay or closing for the safety of students and teachers. Waking up and finding no delay means that there must be safe enough conditions to get to school, right? For the most part, this is accurate: roads have been plowed, salt trucks could be seen working in the early morning and the roads are clear. Except for when you enter the parking lot, that is.
Most snowy days, pulling into the lot is a challenge. Upon entry, the first obstacle faced by drivers is that there aren’t any spots at all: just a blanket of snow. Chances are if the car that is typically next to you isn’t there yet, there’s really nothing else you can do but guess where your parking spot is. After parking, the best idea is to get out of your car and wipe the snow off what is probably pavement to see the number. This is helpful, except when it’s covered in a sheet of ice, making it impossible to see any numbering. Shrugging, you deem it is good enough and walk, defeated, into the school.
This method of locating your spot really isn’t good enough, though. I don’t know about you, but the idea of having teenage drivers contained in an area sliding around together scares me a lot. Not only is it unsafe, but I don’t need any more dents on the vehicle I’m allowed to drive than it already has. I am in no way saying that student drivers are awful, but one to two years of experience still leaves room for error.
There may never be a complete solution to this problem, but something needs to be done about it. Freedom has already been proactive in taking many precautions in order to keep us safe: taking action after bomb threats, requiring proper identification while entering the building, having hall monitors, etc.
Can’t there be more done to the parking lots as well, then? If parking was free, complaints of improper conditions maybe wouldn’t be heard throughout the hallways. But parking is not free, and paying $25 per spot should at least help in getting things under control.
After all is said and done, it is ultimately a personal choice whether or not to drive to school each day. For those involved in activities, driving proves to be very beneficial, if not necessary. Whether you decide to drive or not, take caution when conditions aren’t ideal.. Snow and ice are hazards even to the most experienced driver, so we need to be extra careful and take it seriously.
Hopefully, future drivers will see a change in these unpredictable conditions. Until then, slow down, white-knuckle your steering wheel and hope for the best. The last thing anyone needs is to go off-roading before school.