By Lindsay Haislip
News Editor
Many Washington College students with cars on campus understand the frustration of seeing a red ticket under their windshield wiper. The availability of convenient parking on campus is limited, and causes much frustration for many students rushing to class and faculty coming to work. On average, WC process around 20 tickets per day, sometimes more or less depending on whether or not PS is able to enforce parking rules,” according to Jerrry Roderick, Director of Public Safety.
At one point, there was a freshmen parking lot on the north side of campus on the Western Shore.
“The administration felt as though freshmen used their cars the least had the least demand for a car, and therefore it was logical to have them park their cars out on the north end of campus to free up the inner campus parking for the students that have jobs and routines and need their cars more frequently,” said Roderick.
Once freshmen began to notice how empty the parking lots were in the Zone 1 housing area, they became frustrated.
“They saw it as a great inconvenience and a safety concern to have to walk the distance at night,” said Roderick.
“So after reviewing the use, or lack of use, of those parking areas on that side of campus with the high demand, we eliminated the freshmen parking to allow students to filter back in to those areas,” Roderick said, “knowing that we could not accommodate everybody, but it was certainly better use of our parking in those areas than what we were doing before.”
Some students are frustrated with the parking situation now that the freshmen parking lot no longer exists.
Senior Stephanie Baker said, “It’s really a bad situation and is stressful if you are running late. I think it needs to go back to what it was my freshmen year when all freshmen had to park on the Western Shore. This way it is more fair for upperclassmen.”
PS has seen a decrease in the number of offenders parking in places where they shouldn’t park, as the college has come out of its five-year phase of construction.
“When you have that level of disruption, you create a lot of pressure on parking,” said Roderick.
Now, PS is dealing with the issue of students and faculty parking in the wrong places.
“You have students that are trying to blend into the faculty parking lots, forcing the faculty out into other areas, which creates a domino effect,” Roderick said. “Students blend in and take their spaces and the faculty now have to bleed over and take student spaces.”
Faculty members have the most parking available to them on campus, however still occasionally have trouble finding parking.
Director of the Writing Center John Boyd said, “I do on select days, and I’m never quite sure what drives it. There will be some days when there is no parking available in the lot that I park in. That’s not the majority of days, though. From what I see, parking is probably about what I would expect. In terms of faculty staff parking spaces, if there is deemed to be trouble with parking, policing those without tags would be the one suggestion I would have.”
Some students who commute to the WC on a daily basis think that the parking situation could improve, specifically for commuters.
Junior Jenna Lackrone said, “the WC parking situation is characterized by a lack of information. After multiple parking tickets and conversations with Public Safety, I came to learn that a commuter pass is available to off campus students. Not only is the parking situation a problem, but it is made worse by a lack of available information and assistance.”
Sophomore Lindsay Dodd shared this opinion, saying, “there is adequate parking in the dorm areas but there needs to be more commuter parking for students who live off campus.”
The parking enforcement officer position has been frozen for a number of years now, so PS officers are asked to enforce parking when they are able to. “We get a lot of complaints everyday about people parking illegally on campus that we have to respond to and review the situation and issue tickets as seen,” said Roderick.
There is currently plenty of parking available on campus, but it is not the convenient parking that students and faculty are looking for when they arrive on campus on a cold or rainy morning. On the Western Shore there are many spaces available, but it requires factoring around eight minutes into your schedule to walk to the other side of campus.
“I don’t think eight minutes is a lot of time to ask people to factor into their schedule, particularly people that drive in in the morning and park,” said Roderick. “You have to factor in eight minutes—bottom time.”
“When you have a community like ours where parking is not as convenient as every body wants, and every body is looking for convenience in parking, you’re going to have people out there making bad choices. Enforcement is really the only way to bring about a compliance,” Roderick said.
WC PS does have an appeal process for any tickets that members of the community feel were unwarranted in any way, and they encourage people to take advantage of it.
“We try to be as fair as we can about this process, and be open to whatever the situation may have been that put a person in that position where they were forced to do something,” said Roderick.
April 22, 2011
Volume LXXXI Issue 23