It has come to our attention that students wishing to park on campus have newproblems to deal with. There was a time when students could come to class andhave a multitude of parking areas from which to choose.
However, with the recent addition of the Hotel Management building, the parking lot on Central has
seen a substantial decrease in size.
The effects of this have been seen not only on campus, but in the neighborhoods surrounding the university.
"Illegal" parking has become a widespread practice. We know that this is not because the students WANT to park illegally, but because they have no other choice (unless they want to pay $5 to park in our newly built garage).
The result of the crowded and illegal parking off-campus is that the residents of the nearby neighborhoods have considerable difficulty just getting in and out of their driveways and around their streets.
The second part of the parking problem facing students is that, because they
sometimes have to find "unique" places to park, they are given a ticket by
Parking Services. In essence, the university has taken away a large section ofstudent parking, done nothing to offer replacement for it, and is now punishingthe students for doing what they have to do to get to class.
It seems, also,that Parking Services has increased its' patrol of the parking lots, resulting in more tickets written than in previous sememsters. It is evident to us that Parking Services (and the university as a whole) is exploiting a situation that they created in order to make money for the university.
All we ask is that the school understand the hardship that it has created for students and either create some new and free (and preferably immediate) parkingareas or be more forgiving in our "creative" parking.
James Ferguson and Katie Weldon
Graduate Students - Criminology
