By JONAS MILLER
Features Editor
For two and a half years now I’ve dealt with the parking situation at this school, but no more.
Within the last two weeks I have received three parking tickets, two of which came in the same day. This brings my total since freshmen year up to around a dozen. Some of you might say that it’s entirely my fault, and to that I say: no.
For two and a half years I have paid for a residential parking pass. Yes, freshmen year I had a car on campus, sue me. That’s 300 dollars now that I’ve paid the school to park my car, as if they need one more cent of my money.
You would think that for 100 bucks, I’d be paying for my very own space. That would be reasonable, right? To give every student their own space so that they weren’t paying for an open one that may or may not be there when they go to park.
Sadly, this is not the case. In fact, there aren’t even enough spaces on campus for everyone to park. As of Sept. 22 of this semester, the College had sold 1,569 parking permits. That’s residents, commuters, and faculty permits combined. The kicker: in all of the parking lots that the campus owns, there are 1,123 parking spaces.
Now, obviously not everyone who has a permit is going to try and park on campus at the same time, but from personal experience, the chances are greater than not that there is no where to park between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.
I’m going to try my best to keep this from turning into my own personal list of complaints, but here are some things I just have to get off of my chest.
As an RA in Brubacher Hall, the closest parking lot available to me is the lot adjacent to the EAC. I’ll point out that the distance between myself and that lot is further than the distance between any other student and the closest lot to them. Yes, there are twelve spaces outside Brubacher, and another dozen and a half or so along the sidewalk by the front door, but am I allowed to park there? No.
The 12 diagonal ones that run perpendicular to O’Leary Street are reserved for the four or five faculty members that work in Brubacher, and the rest of them are reserved for commuter students who take art classes in the basement. It’s worth noting that the faculty pay 50 dollars for their permits, as do the commuters. Seems rather unfair that even though I pay double what they pay for my permit, I’m the one that has to walk a block and a half to my car, doesn’t it?
Not to mention, as an RA, I’m technically an employee of the College. The area coordinator of Brubacher, who I’ll admit does much more work than I and has a higher employment status, is also an employee of the college, and has a reserved parking space outside of the building.
Several times I’ve made a push to have some of the spaces outside of the building reserved for Resident Assistants. Multiple people have told me that this will never happen, because if one RA gets a reserved space, then every RA has to get a reserved space. I must politely disagree with this seemingly fair assumption. Not every RA has to walk as far as Brubacher RA’s do, and not all RA’s have to walk by empty parking spaces everyday that very well could, and should, have their car parked in them.
It’s just indecent for anyone to think that the two major resident parking lots on campus, the one behind Centennial Hall, and the one across from the EAC, are of adequate size for all of the residents on campus to park. Let me just add on, that those two lots are part of the College’s 15+ parking lots that exist within one mile of this campus. ONE of those lots (not counting two smaller resident lots that only fit 15 to 20 cars each) is dedicated to resident students only- talk about playing favorites.
I fully understand that this college is made up of mostly commuter students, around two-thirds actually. But this does not mean that they should be prioritized over resident students when it comes to parking.
Finally, I think my biggest issue with parking, is that when a ticket is issued, what are we actually paying for?
No resource is being consumed, and no service is being provided. Where does the 50 dollars from each ticket go? Into the budget that provides money to print more tickets?
If a space regularly sits empty, and it’s a space that I otherwise could be parking in, then I don’t really understand why I’m charged a fee for parking there.
If we can learn anything from this whole situation, it’s that the early bird gets the worm, and the parking space, and the rest of the birds get stuck with 50 dollar fines.
