Dear Editor,
The bureaucratic system that has plagued our institution has made students suffer enough. So why is the Parking and Transportation Services Office contributing to students’ bureaucratic nightmare?
It’s obvious that finding undergraduate student parking on West Campus is like striking gold. Desperate students unwittingly waste an enormous amount of time and gas going from one lot to the next, passing by the abundance of open ‘B’ and ‘A’ spots in order to get a parking spot nearer to the center of campus. This is unfortunate because many students miss portions of their classes, which may be vital for an exam, just because Parking and Transportation Services wants to make an additional buck with ‘B’ and ‘A’ spots. On a daily basis, a number of students spend more than 30 minutes in Gilman Parking Structure waiting on the half floor dedicated to ‘S’ spots. That’s right, in a six-floor parking garage, there is only half a floor with ‘S’ spots and it’s at the very top! For a student population of over 20,000 this seems like an entirely thoughtless arrangement by Parking and Transportation Services. The response is simply, ‘Use Regents!’
Telling students to park in the Regents parking lot, although valid due to the abundance of available ‘S’ spots, also shows how much this institution cares about its students ‘mdash; by pushing us back and making us park entirely away from the center of campus. This seems contradictory to the original purpose of any university, which is to serve its students. Faculty and staff have a much easier time trying to find parking. Almost five of Gilman’s floors are dedicated to them, in addition to three and a half floors in Hopkins Parking Structure, three floors in Pangea Parking Structure, Lot 207, Lot 206, half of Lot 406, Lot 510, Lot 502 and more. The worst part is the amount of available ‘A’ and ‘B’ spots within these lots. Students pass by empty spots and floors in Hopkins trying to reach the top floor. Similarly with Gilman, students have to drive up five floors passing many empty spots to reach the half floor that is dedicated to us. Why are the undergraduate student spaces consistently more difficult to reach?
This is not an issue of creating more ‘S’ spots, but simply an issue of fair reorganization of currently available spaces. Parking and Transportation Services should consider changing many of the consistently empty ‘B’ and ‘A’ spots at the various structures to ‘S’ spots. This would enable students to park nearer to a campus that is supposed to serve the students, instead of having students drive to campus an hour earlier just to wait for a parking spot, or take the shuttle in from East Campus, which doesn’t allow students to maximize their time! This would be a small gesture in support of UCSD’s next generation of scholars.