Should boarders be allowed to keep their cars on campus? This is a question that has many perspectives to consider, but first, we must acknowledge that Loomis Chaffee has always forbidden boarding students from keeping their vehicles on campus due to practicality and safety concerns.
Loomis is a high school, and although the legal age for driving is 16 years old in Connecticut, there are incredible amounts of danger posed around minors driving two-ton hunks of metal in a school zone. With children in every corner of the school, one minor accident could cause a tragedy. Even though it may seem unlikely to students, driving on campus can truly cause severe consequences.
According to sandlawllc.com, a website for pedestrian accident attorneys, tells us that “approximately 25,000 children are injured each year in school zone accidents, with about 100 children being killed.” If most of these accidents are caused by grown adults, one can only imagine the possible catastrophes caused by teens on campus.
Jessica Matzkin, the Dean of Students Life and Wellness, explains that not only does Loomis forbid students to keep vehicles on campus, but all of our peer boarding schools have this rule since it is a “major safety concern and a huge liability.”
Another topic for concern is the vehicles themselves. Although vandalism may be uncommon, the parking spaces that the cars take up can cause issues for visitors on campus for interviews or tours, and even for faculty members or day students. In addition to that, Dean Matzkin brought up another issue with the storage of cars, stating that “[Students] can’t just come and go without us knowing, and we would never be able to oversee who has keys (or spare keys) and where they might be going and who might be going with them.”
Overall, having vehicles taking up parking spaces could make transportation for faculty members, day students, and visitors much harder and difficult to justify, especially when the school doesn’t know who these cars belong to. Most of the boarding student body does not leave campus daily, so having a vehicle on campus is impractical anyways. The only real case that can be made for student car storage is for certain students with special circumstances (ex. going off campus for sports clubs). Though the recent transportation policy permits students to use Uber or other ridesharing apps from campus, it is undeniable that constant rides can be extremely expensive. Nonetheless, as Dean Matzkin stated, storing one’s vehicle on campus is a privilege; therefore, even in special cases students should apply for approval from a dean or an on-campus faculty member. All things considered, having cars on campus have proved unsafe and will most likely remain unsafe. Unless absolutely necessary, no boarder cars should be parked on campus. There is simply too much risk and complication, with little to gain.
