The fate of the gravel lot
By Lewis Anderson ‘24
Courtesy of Kitty Firth on Oct. 27 with a license plate whited out. The circled cars are parked where they are not supposed to be.
On Thursday, Dec. 7, high school students at the Catlin Gabel School, (CGS) are going to vote to decide the fate of the gravel lot. The Catlin Gabel Student Association (CGSA) will present three options for students to conduct ranked choice voting on which option students prefer.
The three solutions that the CGSA will present as outcomes for the vote are:
Allowing only juniors and seniors to park in the gravel lot
Allowing only juniors and seniors to park while assigning specific spots to those who carpool.
Leaving the system the same.
Currently, without all sophomores driving, the gravel lot fills shortly before school starts. During seven out of the nine school days between Wednesday, Nov. 15, and Monday, Dec. 4 the gravel lot filled up between 8:24 AM and 8:30 AM. On average the last spot was taken just after 8:27 AM, three minutes before the start of school.
Often, students who end up not getting a parking spot end up late to their first class as a result of having to go to the St. Vincent's parking garage.
The two days I did not collect data, I could not observe the time the final spot was taken without being late to class. This means that on those days the lot filled up after 8:28 AM. This adds a skew to the data, meaning the real average is likely significantly after 8:27 AM.
Option one, banning sophomores from parking in the gravel lot, would increase the number of spots for juniors and seniors. It would also ensure similar competition for parking spots, even when sophomores get their licenses.
The goal of option two is to incentivize carpooling while mitigating the demand for the gravel lot. The section that CGSA would allocate for reserved parking typically holds 19 cars.
The spots would be distributed to students who drive other students from other households. If more people carpool then there are spots reserved for carpooling, groups that carpool with the most households would get spots.
Courtesy of Google Earth historical data, taken May 7, 2017. The circled area would be reserved for carpooling under option two.
Senior Sofia Rutman, the CGSA secretary, said if there is a tie for who receives a spot, “the goal for tiebreak is to minimize the emissions” produced by students driving to Catlin.
For options one and two, all cars would need to be registered and have a permit displayed on their windshield to park in the gravel lot. A special permit would be given to cars allowed to park in carpool spots. CGSA will enforce this twice a week checking all cars for permits and reporting cars without permits to John Harnetiaux, the Dean of Students at CGS.
The third option is to allow students to choose if they like the current situation, where the whole parking lot is available for students who arrive in time.
The voting for these options will be carried out by ranked-choice voting where the option that receives the fewest number of votes will be eliminated. The students who voted for it will have their votes counted towards their second choice option.
“If we have another day like [Oct. 27], we would need to consider” shutting down the gravel lot, Harnetiaux said. “Students “block[ing] the service road can have a really big impact on somebody's day and students might never see that.”
According to senior John DiLorenzo, the CGS student body president, this situation is because there is not enough space for all the students to park in the gravel lot.
CGSA is taking action because, unless something changes, “in the springtime when sophomores drive, it’s going to be really bad,” said DiLorenzo.
The administration has said they will stand by what the students decide.
This article is up to date as of the time of publication. However, CGSA’s process of deciding options has been fluid, and there is a chance things will change before the vote. CatlinSpeak will work to keep this article updated and accurate.