Photo by Bryce Owen ’17 | Students and faculty park their cars before school Mondy Dec. 5. Campus parking spaces are limited and therefore require a carpool.
By Matthew Zacher ’18
THE ROUNDUP
Brophy’s campus appears to have a profusion of parking spaces at its disposal.
Within close proximity of the campus, there are three lots with a total of about 450 spaces.
In addition to these on-campus lots, there is a extra parking lot on 7th Street at the old post office.
Even with what seems to be ample parking availability, student drivers must have a carpool in order to park on campus.
With a tuition set at $14,650, it seems fair that driving juniors and seniors, at the very least, should be able to park on his own school’s campus.
Mr. John Buchanan, Brophy’s director of security, said that, despite my perception, there simply aren’t enough spaces for juniors and seniors to be able to park.
Brophy has a written agreement with St. Francis Xavier School, the elementary school with whom Brophy shares its largest lot, that guarantees St. Francis Xavier parents, teachers and visitors a certain number of spots, which is about half of the lot.
In addition to this, Brophy teachers and staff, of which there are more than 100, must be able to park on campus.
So, if we are keeping track, the number of parking spaces available is now about 200-250.
That number is not nearly enough for my vision of seniors and juniors being able to park without a carpool to be valid.
Mr. Buchanan also described a trend known as “The Christmas Cars” in which students who were licensed but did not have cars to start the year, but got one at some point.
These new cars need places to park, and thus, the number of parking spaces continues to dwindle.
Despite the limited number of spaces, students still make attempts to arrive at school early or conjure up a “fake carpool” consisting of students walking onto campus from nearby neighborhoods in order to get past the faculty keeping watch over the parking lots.
Faculty are posted at the entrances of parking lots to ensure that students do not park on campus without a carpool.
These students must realize the complexity of Brophy’s parking system and not jump to conclusions, as I did, about Brophy students’ entitlement to a spot.
In this world, it is too easy to jump to conclusions based off of one piece of information, not the whole story.
I saw that there were parking spots open on campus and formed the opinion that since there are spots avaliable we should abandon carpools, and let students park freely.
After I sought the full explanation, however, I learned that my opinion was totally invalid.
While a carpool may be an inconvenience, it is a necessity and a school policy that is unlikely to change.
For students having trouble finding a carpool, visit brophyprep.org, which provides a service that finds other students needing a carpool in your area.
