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Does parking at USU drive you crazy too? By
Tricia L. Mickelsen Every morning as I pray, I ask for help in finding a place to park in the Utah State University B parking lot. This morning after driving around and trying to find a spot for 25 minutes, I thought, "it would be better to get a ticket than to miss my class." I drove down a residential street and parked. The USU parking problem is not new to any student that attends school. It is a constant problem about which nothing is being done. The parking office claims to have solved problems by running a shuttle system. This system is only effective if no buses are "in the shop" and there is not a line longer than the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. If, by some miracle, your commute is free of these unpleasant circumstances, maybe you'll arrive at class on time. Under the false pretense that most students park at the stadium, USU continues to cash in on parking permits and inconvenience of anyone who needs to park close to campus. For a mere $35 you can purchase a B permit from the parking office. This certainly does not ensure you a space since the parking office hands out permits like Krispy Kremes with the "hot now" sign on. There are 1,090 spaces to park on campus with a B permit yet they sell up to three times that many tags. The question is, who wants a tag when it is worthless? This could be considered parking tag inflation! Many parking critics argue that we do not attend school to find parking spaces close to class, yet they ignore the fact that if we cannot find a place to park, we cannot attend class. Others are worried and want to preserve the beauty of our campus by not putting in parking terraces. If you have ever been late for class and found a space to park, you know what a beautiful thing that can be! I propose that we use the existing lots to combat our parking problem -- that we put in parking terraces on the B lots. If each parking lot could hold three times as many cars our parking problems would be solved. Can you imagine not having to arrive an hour before class to find a place to park? Each year the school continues to increase enrollment yet they do nothing to accommodate the B-lot parking problem. This is not only an issue of bad management but also of ethics. Why has the administration continued to do nothing to improve a situation that is affecting so many students? The answer can be found in the simple truth that money is involved. And that, my friends, is the driving force behind Utah State University.
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