Every morning it’s a battle.
It doesn’t matter what time of the day it is during the fall semester, it’s the same old thing. What am I talking about? Finding a parking space on campus.
Finding a parking spot on campus can sometimes be a rare event, especially if it is in the middle of the morning. The rare times it does happen. It is a test of one’s patience.
College parking culture is cutthroat. The bigger the college campus the more dangerous it is. Even if you get a parking space, the drama doesn’t end.
This week I was lucky to get a spot in the Mailman parking lot in the front by my office here at the ASA building. But it didn’t take long before my down time before class was interrupted, as another student pulled up alongside my vehicle and motioned for me to roll down my window.
“Are you going to leave,” he asked.
“I need to get to class. I am already late.”
I told him no. I was just waiting for my class to begin. The reaction on his face was immediate, eagerness turned quickly to scorn as he rolled up his tinted window without a reply, and speedily drove away.
When it comes to getting a parking space at NSU, some students and faculty lose all sense of politeness and decorum.
It’s like being on a battlefield, with commuters fighting for every little inch and the parking space is the prize.
How many of you have driven around for 15 minutes looking for a space, to finally spot an open one across the parking lot, to have it quickly commandeered by a vehicle that came out of know where?
Sigh. You know the saying “Keep Calm. Carry On.”
In the war for parking spots, there exists among NSU commuters a certain pattern: A driver sees an individual walking in a parking lot, then follows that person like a shark ( yes the pun is intended) stalking its prey, hoping to be led to a spot. As a pedestrian, it’s a terrible-feeling, hauling books, a backpack and electronics across the hot parking lot, only to feel the need to walk faster to escape being run over by a greedy parking spot hunter.
The parking garages aren’t any better. They are, in fact, worse. Apparently the words “drive slowly” and “stop” doesn’t apply in these parking garages. Cars drive in and out, barely avoiding collision at every turn with no regard for the right of way of pedestrians. Many blare music so loud it disturbs the entire garage.
Things are made worse still by closing off the entire ground floor of the library parking garage to students. If students do park on the ground level, Public Safety has the audacity to ticket them. This is the most infuriating part of being an NSU commuter.
Now some will say that the ground floor spaces are for the general public to park and use the library. But with the limited amount of parking for students already on campus, how smart is it to invite yet more people in making a bad situation even worse?
With the separation of student and faculty parking outside the administration building, it is confusing to me why faculty and employees still park in the ASA parking lot. Are there not enough faculty and employee parking spaces, just like there aren’t enough student parking spaces?
The closing off of the back of the Mailman parking lot for construction at the beginning of the semester is even more exasperating for me.
Yes, you bore the battle wounds in these parking wars and the battle still continues. Tomorrow, you will get into your car and drive into these parking wars. Good Luck.
