Students are constantly complaining about the amount of parking tickets that have been given out by the administrators the past few weeks. The hike from the Ossian hall parking lot to the school can seem very long in the winter, especially with the traffic induced from moving the start time back an hour. Those students who are running late or are too lazy to park in their assigned spot park often choose to park in the staff/visitor parking alongside the track to save time.

“I park on the track because I am normally late to school, but also because literally no teachers park there so I do not see the problem with students parking on the track,” senior Madison Walsh said.

The issue with students parking in staff spots has increased this year and Safety and Security Specialist William Tippins has begun to ticket cars that park on the track. According to Tippins, with the lowering enrollment of students the need for spots along the track was no longer needed, thus it was turned into visitor/faculty parking.

Before renovation at Ossian the school only had 10 spaces that were available for students, which is why students were allowed to parallel park on the track. Now the school has substantially more spots to sell to students therefore the need for spots on the track is no longer needed.

“We have so many events with so many people from the county coming in and out of this building that we needed to have overflow for staff,” Tippins said, “we don’t want people parking on both sides [of the track], it makes it difficult for traffic.”

In the past few weeks, the amount of tickets given to students has increased significantly compared to last year.

Parking tickets are twenty five dollars each and are marked as an obligation to seniors that must be payed before graduation and underclassmen who wish to get their schedules for the new school year. Parking tickets do not increase in fine throughout the year. The money collected from tickets goes into a private Annandale account.

“I definitely have seen an increase in the amount of tickets this year. I remember last year I only got tickets around the springtime but I have gotten four in the past week,” senior Waleed Awad said.

A parking pass for the entirety of the year costs $200 but as the year progresses the cost drops. One full year parking pass is equivalent to getting 8 tickets, money some students decide is worth the shorter walk.