With the start of the new school year, new safety rules were implemented by the PV High administration due to the increasing amount of students going to their cars during lunch, which invoked strong opinions from many upperclassmen.

Due to the open environment of the PVHS campus, the administration was concerned with student safety for a variety of reasons, such as recent worries of school shootings and the use of vapes on campus. As a result, there are new rules pertaining to student parking.

However, there is another rule put in place this year which caused the most outrage amongst juniors and seniors in particular: students are no longer allowed to hang out in the student parking lots during nutrition or lunch.

Over the summer, PVPUSD advised the PV High administration to look over the campus for any safety issues, which led the administration to take notice of a problem with the student parking lot.

“It is one of our most vulnerable spaces,” Associate Principal Keely Hafer said.

“If something happens, it’s not as easy to hide or run.”

Influenced in part by the mass school shootings across the nation this year, the administration fears that the parking lot is less sheltered or secure than the main campus.

Vaping on campus also became a reason for concern among the administration.

“There is a growing trend nationwide with students doing drugs and vaping,” Hafer spoke.

After many incidents with students vaping in their cars as well as in the restrooms, the administration thought things had to be changed.

“[The tightened security rules] help maintain our students’ health and well-being on campus. It is good for the students, even if you guys think it isn’t,” said Hafer.  

Despite all that the administration has said in defense of these tightened safety measures, students are still vehemently defiant and annoyed.

Many students don’t believe the reasons behind these rules make sense or will improve safety.

Regarding the event of a school shooter, a majority of students believe that the parking lot is in fact safer than being on the main campus.

“If a shooter comes on campus, we can just drive away and take people with us away from the shooting,” junior Nico Mendez said.

With the new school policy on school intruders, “Run, Hide Fight,” students are further convinced that it is safe to be in the parking lots.

“For us, it should be ‘Run, Hide, Fight, Drive,” said Mendez.

When it comes to the use of vapes on school campus, numerous students feel that it is not fair for the students who do not take part in such acts.

“Not everybody does that,” PVHS junior Aya Cohen said. “It isn’t fair for everybody else who just want to do simple student things.”

An abundance of students do not see vaping as much of an issue as the administration does. They merely view the new rules as an infringement of their unspoken “privileges” of being an upperclassman.

Senior Lauren Duffy was so outraged that she initiated a petition in an attempt to reverse the tightened security rules with hundreds of students signing.

“I waited all this time for this and it’s not fair,” Duffy said. “I want to be able to just eat in my car, listen to music, have air conditioning, and just hang out. It’s not dangerous.”

Because students such as Duffy believe it is safer in the parking lots, they do not regard it as much of a threat.

In regards to the prevention of vaping, students think that if campus security can search vehicles and surveil the parking lots, it should not be much of an issue either.

Regardless of what students think, these measures are in place in order to make campus safer.

“It’s only because we love you guys,” Hafer said. “We don’t want anything wrong to happen on this campus and we care about you guys.”