Ten minutes. That’s how long it took for that little white slip to appear under my windshield wiper courtesy of Parking Services while I was inside Wilson Commons, unknowing.
Somewhere I heard a straw breaking that proverbial camel’s back. Ten minutes? What’s wrong with the system when you can’t temporarily park anywhere without being blasted with a $15 or, in my case, $25 fine.
Wilson Commons, amazing though this fact may be to Parking Services, is not accessible by any roads. It’s at the center of campus – a completely inaccessible center of campus.
Food delivery people are forced to drive right up on the lawn to deliver food to groups, and students have nowhere to go who need to run inside for a quick minute. Do delivery people get fines too? And as pleasing to the eye as delivery trucks are constantly parked on the lawn, something needs to be done.
The lawn is torn up on a consistent basis by anyone loading or unloading anything into or out of the building.
Just this past week, a large, ungainly red truck was parked out front for days, presumably packing up from Meliora Weekend. There is no loading dock, no back entrances to speak of and no convenient way to unload something from a vehicle without creating a spectacle.
The few temporary parking spots you are allowed to park in are the 15-minute flashers located alongside the Goergen Athletic Center, which amounts to a sure brush with death when attempting to back out blindly from one of those spots. Students shouldn’t be slapped with fines when there is nowhere to park temporarily a majority of the time.
If the administration would like Wilson Commons to be the center of student activities, as they say, it should be a place students and community members alike can get to.
Any head of any club who must get food for a meeting runs into the same problem of trying to work the logistics of either finding the delivery person or trying to park and bring the food in and avoid being ticketed.
Instead, spaces should be allotted somewhere close to Wilson Commons, perhaps along Faculty Road, still leaving space for emergency service vehicles in case a situation arises.
Parking problems are not new, and although this only adds to the pile of complaints already on the table, it’s one that can be remedied. There doesn’t have to be a whole temporary parking lot, and they don’t have to move Wilson Commons or anything extraordinary.
For once, remedy a problem that can be easily solved and give people a break.
Linden can be reached a klinden@campustimes.org.
