Free Parking For All?!

Media by Justin Cross.

A rumor on campus has been going around that Campus Safety and our counselors at GSGA are planning on making parking around campus FREE! That means no more parking tickets for parking in the Junior/Senior lot. If you stay on campus, you know the struggle of waking up every morning, hoping and praying, that you don’t have one of those yellow pieces of paper on your car. We may not have to fear the ticket crisis on campus anymore. An interview with Haven Robertson, student counselor of GSGA, expresses what this free parking may look like.

Robertson gave some information on this rumor and she did indeed confirm that as for right now, it is just a rumor. The council did meet with campus security and Ross Baker to try and discuss the possibility of free parking for all the students. In the meeting, they basically described the main issues we are facing right now with free parking.

Media by Rakim Murphy.

Money

Obviously money is going to be an issue. We are a small DIII school in little Greenville, Illinois. When asked why we can’t get donors to sponsor our parking lots, Robertson replied that we have sponsors that only have money for certain projects on campus, like the Jesus statue or Hogue Tower. However, they are currently looking for sponsors to help support our parking lots. Speaking of more money, the head of campus safety told Ross Baker and our counsel that it is a city ruling that all roads used for parking lots need to be paved – it looks like a lot of our lots will be getting a makeover!

Inconvenience and Unfair

Media by www.alignedholistics.com.

Robertson expressed her concerns with the parking lot alternatives suggested. One alternative was to have “Dorm only parking,” meaning if you live in one of the dorms on campus then you should only have access to that parking lot. Of course, they would have to take away most of the signs around campus and make some parking lots on campus combined to equal out the availability of space for all the students on campus. This is one of Robertson’s concerns as she explains, “Burritt will have an issue because of the number of people that live there. There won’t be enough space for all the people.”

Another option is to get rid of the parking signs altogether and have a first-come, first-serve method. However, that would mean a lot of spaces would be taken from students that actually live in certain dorms by students that live all the way across campus.

In conclusion, I believe Robertson has given us some valuable hope for the future of Greenville parking! We are currently in the works of figuring out the parking crisis for our students, but we want to make sure it benefits ALL of our students. If we get the right donors to contribute to our parking lots we may have this solved sooner than you think! Do what you can to support this cause and help get the awareness of this issue.

1 COMMENT

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here