The Students’ Association Senate completed negations with Parking Services last Wednesday. The negations were initiated because of the large volume of student complaints about parking.
The first issue addressed was parking in the Library Lot. As the parking situation currently stands, students can park from 4 p.m. until 7:30 a.m. when they have to move their car. Under the new agreement, however, students can now park in the Library Lot between the hours of 3 p.m. and 8 a.m.
“I think that the parking situation right now does not fit with the class schedules,” junior Martha Guenther said. “It’s a great idea for them to move the parking hours to 3 p.m. so that students can be on time and have the lot accessible to them before their 3:25 classes.”
The second problem was that of pricing for the farther away lots – the Nuclear Structure Research Lab lot and the Park South lot. For the 06-07 academic year the cost of parking in NSRL and Park South will be reduced by $75.
“Students who park in NSRL and Park South pay the same rate as everyone else, $300,” Students’ Association Senator Hannah Geswein said. “However, NSRL is in the Brighton Township and we think it is really unfair for students parking there to be paying the same rate as students who live and park in Hillcourt. It’s to try to make up for the inequity. Even Park South is a pretty long hike.”
The SA felt that the system was in need of updating.
“Most people who are parked farther away are there because didn’t get their stuff in on time,” Students’ Association Senator Pat Brennan said. “However, the student fare structure hadn’t been changed in 10 years and Parking Services were open to re-looking at it.”
This year 93 students currently park in Park South and 56 students park in NSRL. The price reduction can give a chance for students who want to save money to park in the farther away parking lots rather than get put there because of a raffle.
“It’s kind of a step toward a tiered system, where the further lots would cost less and the closer lots would cost more,” Geswein said.
The SA is considering completely revamping the entire current parking system and making it all a tiered system. The new system would be based on the current tiered system the faculty uses to determine parking. Each parking lot would have a different cost and students would sign up for their preference accordingly.
“The system would be first come first serve, the first person to get forms in chooses the lot he or she would like to park in and they know how much it is going to cost,” Geswein said. “Then, as soon as each lot fills up it gets removed from the options.”
The tiered system would not lose all of the aspects of seniority that are currently in place with the raffle system. Seniors would get to turn in their forms first, followed by Juniors, then Sophomores.
While the new tiered system is still under the planning process, it is already received good feedback from the student body.
“I think it’s going to go over pretty well, we have some work to do in terms of figuring out what the exact structure is but I think students will be very receptive” Brennan said. “For a lot of people on the quad who aren’t going to be close to their housing it might make some sense for them to save money and park in the farther away lots.”
The tiered parking structure proposal will be on the SA ballots in April as a referendum. Jarrett can be reached at bjarrett@campustimes.org.
