Imagine at 8:15 on a late start day, you pull into the parking lot at school, thinking you will score the best parking spot in the whole campus for the day. Your eagerness turns into horror as you see many spaces already filled up.

Parking at school is a privilege, but the craze for getting a good parking spot has been getting extreme. Students have been competing with each other for a parking spot, arriving at school as early as a little more than an hour before school starts. A simple solution to this problem is to start assigning parking spots to students, a policy that many other schools have adopted.

AM parking can get messy and chaotic, with people racing in the lot to get a good spot. Too many times to count, there are students whipping their cars around a turn like theres no tomorrow in search of a spot. Especially with other cars and people around, this speed can be dangerous. Assigned parking spaces can help ease students’ anxiety about finding a spot, knowing exactly where to go each morning and knowing that their designated parking space is still available. Another benefit of having assigned parking spaces is that students may be able to score some extra sleep, whether it be fifteen or twenty minutes, instead of worrying about getting to school so early.

No parking situation can ever be perfect, with traffic and other factors. But by adopting an assigned parking policy, it can increase efficiency and reduce chaos in school parking lots.