Parking sucks. For commuters, on campus students, faculty and staff, and everyone who works at or attends this school –parking sucks (unless, of course, you have your own reserved spot in front of the university).
Students, whether on-campus residents or commuters, are no strangers to the parking problems plaguing Loyola. Whether it’s waiting in lines that run out of the parking garages in to the street in the vain hope of snagging a spot, hoping to catch someone backing out of their spot, or finding a space on Calhoun big enough for the arduous task of parallel parking, parking is a game students are forced to play every morning – a game that wastes their time, money, and sanity.
Whether in West Road or Freret, on Calhoun, Palmer, State, or even those stuck on Nashville, parking on and around campus is a labyrinth that no one can escape from truly unscathed. Loyola would be doing something right by inscribing “Abandon all hope all ye who enter here” on the front of the parking garages. It might count as false advertising if they don’t.
There are many issues with parking the school could fix if they weren’t so busy selling our parking spaces to Tulane students, and whoever else they justify selling our spaces to when they sell a spot to a “non-Loyola community member.”
With only 1,500 parking spots on a campus of more than 4,000 students, plus faculty and staff, and other non-community members, Loyola isn’t properly providing parking.
When they closed the Mercy Hall lot, Loyola did a huge disservice to its community. By not ensuring that there were proper alternatives to parking in Mercy, Loyola left people stranded having to find parking on streets that are too full, in spots that are too busy, and risk facing innumerable tickets when there was a “no stopping sign” someone didn’t see.
Making students shell out $400 annually for a parking pass on a campus with so few spots – in an area as busy as Uptown, and with as many issues our streets already face – is an insult to we the students and a drain on our wallets. Last year Loyola didn’t enforce parking passes until Sept. 7. But now they’ve decided that parking on campus didn’t cause us enough issues as is and began ticketing and booting cars two weeks earlier this year, on Aug. 23, right as our bank accounts hit $0 after paying for tuition, housing, rent, gas, and every other financial burden on our plates.
On Aug. 15th, an email was sent out stating that Loyola would be providing fewer parking spaces to “non-Loyola community members.” That is not a solution and it does not show a firm commitment on the part of Loyola to make necessary changes in order to provide for its students. The university needs to understand that it must be first and foremost committed to providing for its students, for those who live both on and off campus, and not selling our resources away to “non-Loyola community members.”
Maybe a potential solution could be to ban faculty from parking on campus, that way professors actually have an excuse as to why they’re always late to class.
Until the university starts coming up with viable solutions to the epidemic that is the lack of parking on campus, we can all remain united in our simple problem: parking sucks.
