Traditionally, the privilege of parking on campus has been researved exclusively for seniors, while students in other grades are not permitted to use the parking facilities during school hours. However, since the start of this school year, twelfth grade assistant principal Patrick Boyle — who oversees Conestoga’s facilities and parking — has noticed a significant increase in students breaking the rules by utilizing on-campus parking without a legitimate parking permit.

For some seniors, such as Mayank Dora, it has become harder to get a parking spot in the school due to the rule breaking.

“The juniors parking here have started to take up too many spots, and it’s gotten to the point where getting to school on time is a problem,” Dora said. “With the congestion juniors are causing in the parking lots, it’s started to take ages to get in and out of school.”

To ensure that other grades are not using parking facilities during the day, Conestoga administration has increased the frequency of checks throughout the school day, making sure that every student entering the parking lot has a parking permit.

“We do checks as much as possible, either during lunch or out during the rest of the school day,” Boyle said. “But we can’t be out there physically checking every single day, and there are still students who pull through when we aren’t looking.”

The administration has been monitoring the parking lot throughout lunchtime to make sure students who are leaving campus and parking again are using parking permits. According to Boyle, the school administration has been conducting checks during different times of the day after noticing students parking without permits this year.

“We’ve started to do checks right in the morning and in the afternoon to further discourage juniors from parking on campus,” Boyle said. “If we catch anyone parking against the rules, they will face consequences expressed from the code of conduct.”

Boyle feels that other students taking advantage of on-campus parking without having parking permits is unfair, especially since seniors have paid to have this service.

“Juniors should absolutely not be parking (at Conestoga), because seniors have paid $180 to have and enjoy that privilege,” Boyle said. “We’ve made sure that anyone who’s gotten caught has faced consequences, either with a loss of parking for this year or even the next year.”

Rohan Anne can be reached at [email protected].