The new parking rules put into effect over the summer have left many returning students angry and scratching their heads. In previous years, each class had assigned parking lots, but now anyone can park anywhere.
“The way I understand it is, what Public Safety was trying to do was to make a more legalatarian parking system so that all students were traded the same since now all students are paying the same” says Vice President for Student Affairs Lee Peters,
Public Safety, is also hoping that the new rules will lead to less parking tickets on campus. This summer, they met with SGA President Adam Stanisic to try and figure out a new parking arrangement on campus.
“What we ultimately said, was that this plan was not a long term solution,” Stanisic says “It’s not something that’s going to drastically improve parking on campus, but we agreed that we would try it.”
According to public safety, the new rules have been effective in lowering tickets on campus. But the plan has also met backlash from upperclassman who are frustrated with having to park their cars so far away from their buildings.
Vice President Peters, has said that he has been getting suggestions from many students.
“Many of them have proposed having N Lot be for upperclassmen, like just making that one addition to the situation, and that appears o be reasonable to me, if it isn’t working out the other way.” Peters, says.
But according to Michael Kaselouskas, a Lieutenant with Public Safety, and the person who came up with the new parking arrangements, that possibility won’t be happening any time soon.
“That’s a possibility, and we can look at that after this year, this year is a learning curve for al of us to see what happens”
Many students have turned to Facebook, the popular social networking site, to voice their opinions. One group has a petition, which has been signed by over 750 students.
“I think it’s appropriate if student don’t like it, they should tell tem that,” says Peters “What they should also do if they have ideas about what’s a great solution they should give to them as well.”
“I think we need to go back to the drawing table” says Stanisic “We need to bring in a professional who can look at our campus and who can just do a complete re-evaluation of the whole parking structure, the whole parking system.
We want to hear what you have to say about this situation. You can voice your opinion by sending an email to . Watch for next week where we’ll be looking at the parking from the students perspectives.
