It’s 7:50, the bell rings as students begin to crowd the halls, making their way to their first period class. However, there are some students still walking up the sidewalk to enter the school, now being late because they were unable to get a spot in the upper lot. Due to changes made by administration almost a month ago, students have been having problems getting to their lockers and even becoming late to their classes. However, in the eyes of the administration, these are minor downside to a much bigger safety precaution.

Ever since the announcement of the closing of the senior doors, students have been protesting the change, saying that it’s an  “inconvenience”. Students like Haley Roiland, senior, who park in the lower lot are now fighting for upper lot spots to escape the cold. The problem doesn’t lie in how the school is built, it’s the inconvenience of where the lower lot is in relation to the school, Roiland said.

“Where the parting lot is located in relation of the school is causing more of an issue than anything else. The way the school was set up, the main entrance was by the upper lot,” Roiland said. “Maybe when they were building they weren’t thinking about that because they built it a long time ago. Where the parking lot is located, where majority end up parking in relation to the school, and how it is set up is kind of inconvenient.”

Due to this inconvenience, Roiland, like many other students who chose their locker near the B-Wing to be near the senior exit, now won’t use her locker as much due to this change.

“I had pick my locker near the B-wing, near the senior doors, because my last class is over there. I also walk in and out that way, so I could use that locker. Now when I walk into the school, unless I want to walk all the way around, I can’t really use my locker in the morning, unless I have extra time.” Roiland said.

Especially in the winter where students use their locker to store heavy coats and snow boots, it’s going to be harder to get from their lockers and then to class on time, according to Roiland. However, Brittany Schauer, security guard, believes that this distance between the entrance and the students is important.

“I feel like if you cut down on number of entrances, it makes it easier. God forbid if something were to happen, administration knows to come down to one area vs trying to figure out which door people are at,” Schauer said. “Plus the main entrance is the furthest away from classrooms, from the lunch room where a lot of kids sit in the morning.  There’s only the gyms [down by the main entrance] and a lot of kids just [go past the gyms], so the main entrance is the furthest from where most of the students are.”

This distance put between the students and the potential threat allows for the correct authorities to come and asses the situation, according to Mark Brunner, Security Supervisor. Although many students believe that the administration sat down and made this decision, that was not the case according to Brunner.

“Ultimately there is a misconception that the administration or security sat down and looked at this and said ‘this is something we want to do to see how it goes’. People are frustrated by that and that it is a minor inconvenience, but this was done through a law enforcement evaluation of  the school and how the flow of traffic is coming in or out of it,” Brunner said. “Through that law enforcement evaluation, they felt that door seven was an access point or entry point into the school that was too close to too much student traffic where it is a higher safety risk than if we control the flow of traffic through an area that can be better monitored so we can handle that flow of traffic better and also it is a secured area where if something were to take place, we could better handle it, and notify the proper authorities where we could get that type of support and also have that much further away from most of the student activities.”

This decision to make these safety precaution is all to prevent the situation of a dangerous threat getting to anyone to the building and the school continues to work with authorities to make sure the school is a safe learning environment for students, according to Brunner. The fact that the lower lot is where most students who drive park is where most of the backlash is from, according to Roiland.

“I think in this case we just need to consider how our school is different vs. elementary schools and middle schools. There aren’t students parking in a parking lot, they’re just being dropped off by the bus by the entrance. Or they have a front entrance where they need to go through the office,” Roland said. “But in our case there’s a parking lot where the majority of the people driving are parking. They have to consider the fact that [the lower lot] is how many people get to school.”