As commuters, David and I tend to drive to classes more than the average student.
It’s not just that we hate Mother Nature, either. Sometimes we have legitimate reasons like the transportation of large instruments, the generally unpleasant weather or some combination of the two. The real challenge, though, comes when we try to choose a parking place.As commuters, are we supposed to have student parking stickers? While this was never made clear to us, deductive reasoning tells us that we should, because we are, in fact, students. For students who live on the residential half of the tracks, a student pass allows for parking in convenient areas such as near the apartments and at the lot between Physical Plant and the College Ave. houses.
A quick scan of parking lots on the campus map shows that, as off-campus students, a student parking pass is a limitation rather than a benefit. We would prefer to park on the west side of the tracks, nearer our classes, our mailboxes and our commuter lockers. Unfortunately, there is no student parking on the west side of the tracks – not even outside the commuter student lounge.
With visitor parking outside the commuter lounge, it may be better to consider ourselves visitors. We’ve heard rumors that frequent commuting “visitors” also run the risk of a ticket, though, so even this might not be the best solution.
What is a workable solution? With such limited parking west of the tracks, it’s not realistic to believe that a new commuter parking area will appear anytime soon. At the very least, we’ve decided to hope for clearer guidelines (or more clear communication of those guidelines), which would be a good starting point.
Michael Martin and David Kempf are seniors, majoring in communication and music, respectively.
