To put it plainly, the student parking lot here at Portage Northern is rather less than perfect. It is cluttered and crowded, which can be and often is problematic. For the price of twenty dollars to park per school year, this is not a great value.

The primary issue with the parking lot is the lack of smooth traffic flow. “There’s pretty much one spot where everyone has to cram through,” said Aden Molenaar (12). Now, there are two different ways for students to enter or leave the school, but one way requires drivers to have to deal with the school buses and the other becomes jam packed with traffic within a matter of minutes. And let’s not forget that all of the drivers using the parking lot are high school students! “People don’t know how to drive,” says Austin Miller (12), “and the bad traffic flow in the parking lot only makes things that much worse. It isn’t organized very well, so people just kind of do whatever they want.” Indeed, the combination of poor student driving and congested traffic flow makes for a bad parking situation.

Unfortunately, there are no immediate solutions for these parking lot woes.  However, with some long-term planning, Portage Northern could one day boast having the most student friendly parking lot in the area. A reasonable renovation focusing on a more efficient and practical traffic flow would be an excellent improvement to the PN campus. The accessibility of the parking would be improved and easier for students to use, resulting in happier students. And contributing to student happiness is certainly an infallible way of promoting and increasing positivity, which as we all know by now is the P in everyone’s favorite acronym, Huskie PRIDE.