GRANGER has two big parking lots. The parking lot closest to the school is numbered and students may pay to reserve a spot, while the parking spots farther away by the tennis courts are free for anyone to use.

This can lead to problem because students who pay for their spots get angry when other students park there without permission. Acxel Hernandez (11) purchased a parking spot at the beginning of the year. Throughout the school year, he has arrived at school to find cars parked in his parking spot. “Sometimes I arrive late to school, and when I am late, there is another car in my spot, but I don’t have time to deal with it, so I just park somewhere else and go to class,” Hernandez said.

He says he doesn’t know why people want to steal a spot when they have the chance to buy one, and it’s not expensive. Most of the time, different cars are parked next to him. “When I do get my spot, I always notice that there are different cars around me, and I don’t know if they own multiple cars or those spots are getting stolen, too,” Hernandez said. 

Manuel Lopez (11) is a student who confessed that he used to park wherever and steal spots in previous years. Back then, he used to think that having to pay for a parking spot was dumb for school, so he never did. He used to do this because he felt like it wasn’t that big a deal. “Last year I would park anywhere, and I didn’t care if it belonged to someone because I wanted to be closer to the school’s entrance,” he said.

He says he thought no one did this because he remembered hearing that doing so can lead to consequences, so he was scared to do it, but after he saw that nothing was happening, and saw others doing it, he continued to park in whatever spot he wanted. 

“I would notice that other kid’s would do this because I would see the same car being parked in different spots, so I knew I wasn’t alone in this,” Lopez said. Now he no longer does this and follows the rules for parking. He stole parking spots during the last semester of his sophomore year, because after the first semester, he was tired of being all the way in the back.” I actually bought a parking spot this year so I can always be closer to the school and not have to worry about finding an open spot,” Lopez said.