Quit complaining about parking!
Dustin Zick
Web Editor
I’m going to be honest. I’m sick of hearing people complain about parking here at Carroll, both from commuters and on-campus students. It would seem that the majority of complaints should come from commuters but I believe in my time at Carroll I’ve heard an equal amount from both ends.
I think part of it falls into the blending of two different issues involving parking. Is there enough of it, being one. The second being, how easily accessible it is. I don’t know the exact numbers, so I won’t make any statement on empirical fact, but from the best of my observations I can tell that there is enough of it.
It seems like all the freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors who live on campus and want a car, have their car and have a parking permit. I occasionally hear the horror story from a commuter student about how they weren’t able to make it to class due to being unable to find a parking spot, though it’s typically difficult to distinguish fact from fiction when such a case is presented to an unwitting professor.
There’s overflow, Barstow, plenty of nearby streets, even a city municipal lot with tons of open spots. If you search hard enough there’s seemingly always someplace to park.
Let’s say there aren’t enough spaces. There have been rumors thrown around for years about a potential parking structure being built, and there’s been counter-rumors thrown around that it will never happen, the latter of which it seems to be a far more likely truth. I’ve also heard some students inquiring about pushing the city to ease parking restrictions on nearby streets – which seems like a doable short-term fix to me.
Yet, by far the best idea I’ve heard regarding addressing the parking issue is to somehow limit the amount of permits we currently issue. Which it would seem to me is something we already do. After all, why would we sell more permits to on-campus students than we have spaces for? Some sort of streamlined system that gave preference to upper-classmen would work well.
To return to my original point, I’m bothered by the huge emphasis on parking by students. It would seem that there are much larger issues at hand with the college that are far more deserving of the attention some give to these parking ‘issues.’ Larger issues such as the ongoing legal battle the college is fighting against the faculty union or the state of tenure for some of our most valued professors.
I don’t know if it’s because parking seems to be a much more cut and dry issue, or if it’s because it’s the most obvious thing that many of us deal with every day. The focus needs to shift though; there are far more important things at hand than how far we have to walk when we finally find a parking spot in the afternoon. Things that directly affect the quality of education we’re receiving right here, right now.