Spring season is rolling around and student athletes, specifically juniors lacking parking passes, all over Langley are feeling the pains of lugging their equipment on the bus and through the halls. There is only one solution, right? Seasonal passes would provide athletes with parking spots for the duration of the individual’s season. And in a perfect world this would be a marvelous idea.

Let me break it down for you. Sure, there may be enough passes for every lacrosse-playing junior at Langley, but then what about softball, girls tennis, track, etc.? One would have to assume that in a parking lot full of more than four hundred seniors, scattered juniors and an entire faculty of two hundred, seven sports worth of junior athletes could not possibly fit into Langley’s parking lot.

Where do you draw the line? If it was even possible to give every athlete with a license a seasonal parking pass, where would the requests stop? If Langley athletics get special treatment the domino effect can result in clubs and activities demanding spaces of their own.

For example, a chorus member talks to a friend who plays baseball and gets a parking pass from late February till May. Well the chorus member has to stay after school too and he or she doesn’t get the same privilege the baseball player does. Next thing you know Mr. Mark Rogers, Langley’s Safety and Security Specialist, has band, orchestra, Spanish club and who else knows what banging on his door screaming for justice.

In 1999, Langley experimented with seasonal passes, this was back when Langley’s current Attendance Office Administrator, Ms. Nancy Schultz, was in charge of parking. “All of the sudden everyone became an athlete,” Schultz said. In addition, Langley athletes must look at the figures. There are over 2,000 students at Langley, which is far more than the roughly 1,300 students back in ’99.

If there was a way to work out the system fairly between clubs, sports and other Langley students involved in after school activities, there is still no room. With 2,000 students, approximately half of them with the ability to drive to school each morning, there are only about 500-600 spots. 200 of said parking spaces are occupied by Langley staff and about 400 by seniors. That leaves almost no spots for juniors, athletes or not.

“I wish we had a double-decker parking lot,” said Mr. Rogers. 

The sad reality is that we don’t and so many student athletes will have to continue to hide amongst the rows of cars, praying every day as they walk out to their car that there isn’t a yellow slip waiting for them on the windshield.