Every morning before school starts, hundreds of students drive to Loyola from all across Los Angeles. In this endeavor, students and security have to cooperate with each other to pack into the limited spaces across all of Loyola’s lots from Berendo to Dewey, often leading to unflattering student-parking jobs. This challenge becomes even more difficult for everyone when Loyola hosts any of its countless events that occur throughout the year.
When interviewing Ozzie Orosco, Loyola Security Supervisor, he commented that the population of students who drive to school consists of about 100 sophomores, 300 juniors and 300 seniors, adding up to around 700 students who Loyola has to find spaces for each morning.
Mr. Orozco said that this number increases by around, “50-65 cars after senior project and there is not enough room.” He said that for certain events, the school does not have enough parking spaces to accommodate the number of cars and has to resort to using public streets such as Venice Boulevard to keep these cars.
The parking problem becomes even more difficult for security when students park poorly. Security staff said that when most students have their permit, they do not have to park the car and just swap seats with their parents when it is time to get dropped off. This is an issue for the people attempting to facilitate the parking lot because when new drivers start parking, they do it poorly which does not help with Loyola’s already limited parking capacity. Not only are poor student-parking jobs an issue for the security staff, but also for other student drivers who have to navigate tighter spaces as a result.
Prospective student driver Columban Baggot ’27 states, “As I begin driving to Loyola everyday, parking is by far the most difficult and stressful task… it doesn’t necessarily put me off from driving, but is still undoubtedly intimidating during an already stressful time in my life.”
In the interview with Ozzie Orozco, he gave several examples of solutions that would help the school to hold this large capacity of cars with ease. One method he recommends is building a second level on top of the Dewey lot. He said that by, “building a structure, even just one floor would double our capacity.”
However, this is not only the first time, but also far from the last time Loyola has faced parking troubles. The school has significantly expanded its parking range throughout the years and continues to do so. Despite this, Loyola’s parking dilemma will persist for years to come with the stream of new students arriving at Loyola and the plethora of events throughout the year. As Loyola continues to adjust to demand for parking, with the high volume of students, security staff and drivers have to work together by managing the limited space and parking well to accommodate the massive amount of cars.
To conclude, the issue of parking at Loyola is an institutional issue that is truly harder to solve than many may expect. The poor parking we see on campus is merely a symptom of the greater issue. As no one likes to see someone parked across the lines, Loyola has to remember that proper parking is everyone’s responsibility at all times.
Park well, Cubs!
