While it’s common for seniors to consider specific parking spaces to be “theirs” (and to claim to be annoyed when someone else is parking in “their” space), some seniors have gone the extra mile to make a space their own.
At the start of the school year, seniors were given the opportunity to buy and paint a reserved parking space. While this option had been available in the past, Student Government Association (SGA) officers, including Jamie Rodriguez, Vaile Altherr, Taneya Jackson, Ariana Nolte, Maddie Daidone, and Rebekah Kraft, resurrected this senior perk this year.
For $25, students were able to reserve a specific space, and for an extra $25, paint it however they chose. Senior Matthew Gresham was excited to reserve his spot.
“I really like where it is. I also like the security of knowing that there is a spot for me,” he said. Gresham said that although he still hasn’t broken out his paint cans, he wants to paint his spot navy blue with the Liberty University logo and his graduation date on it.
“I got accepted there [at Liberty] past July, so I’d like to commemorate it. I still haven’t had the time to do it. However, I am planning on doing it sometime next semester,” he said.
Senior Jamie Rodriguez said she chose to paint a senior parking space because “it was a cool tradition that I’d seen people do a long time ago. I wanted to do it again myself because I thought it was so cool and I feel like we don’t do a lot of stereotypical senior traditions or high school traditions in general this year.”
As of mid-December, Rodriguez had also not yet painted her space, noting that she has been busy with cross country and other events. However, she said she plans to do a series of designs from her favorite video game, Stardew Valley (a farming simulator), and then put a “J” in the middle for her first name.
One of the most elaborate, colorful painted spots in the senior lot currently is one which belongs to senior Julia Tomaras. “When my sister was in high school they got to do the painted spots,” she said, “so I bought the parking pass because of that. I was also hearing that they were going to crack down more on violations if you didn’t have a parking pass, but I bought a reserved space mostly because I wanted to paint it as well.”
Tomaras’ parking spot is painted with colorful bears. In the background beside Tomaras’ spot is senior Sydney Derrickson’s spot, which is painted to look like the cover of Mac Miller’s mixtape “I Love Life, Thank You.”
