2008 Woodie Awards
Parking woes continue at SRU
By Amy Kelly
Rocket News Editor
Issue date: 1/27/06 Section: Opinion
Safety and a well-rounded education are the top priorities at Slippery Rock University. But how safe are students when they have to walk clear across campus to their dorms after parking their cars in no man's land? Residential parking is a major problem on this campus. Unless you live in Founders or Kraus, you have to hike from the East Lake parking lot to get home. What happens if you need to go to work at 6 a.m. or don't get back from work until midnight? How safe would you feel?
SRU offers on-campus jobs, but as everyone knows, some of the main buildings are not within the main campus. Some of these are the women's soccer house, the football field and the newly built Equestrian Center. At the Equestrian Center, for example, the horses need to be fed every morning. To do that you have to drive up there before your classes. In some cases people start classes at 8 a.m., meaning they would have to get up around 6 a.m. Due to the fact that you can't park beside your building, unless you are a Kraus or Founders resident, you have to go get your car. With the weather getting colder, the long walks from Kraus, North, Patterson, Harner and even Dodds start to get old. Many who do luck out and get to park by their building end up losing their spot and have to resort to the long haul.
There are about six commuter parking lots and about five resident parking lots. Although the number is almost even, the spaces within the parking lots are greatly different. Excluding the East Lake parking lot, since it is the "universal" lot for both residents and commuters, there is a greater number of commuter spaces compared to resident spaces. This is understandable, because commuters always have a car, unlike residents who live here so there really is no need for one. The main commuter parking lots have on average 50 spaces, however this number expands when you talk about the huge parking lot behind Eisenberg Classroom Building. Residents have on average 10-15 spaces, making it a great difficulty to park anywhere besides East Lake.
After taking all the facts into consideration, a good idea that should be brought up to the University would be to make half of the parking lots commuter and the other residential. Or to simply make more residential parking areas closer to the main buildings. Other universities do not allow freshmen to have cars, and this could also be a route that we could try to go down. If this problem is not fixed soon, there could be many more unhappy students here at Slippery Rock.
SRU offers on-campus jobs, but as everyone knows, some of the main buildings are not within the main campus. Some of these are the women's soccer house, the football field and the newly built Equestrian Center. At the Equestrian Center, for example, the horses need to be fed every morning. To do that you have to drive up there before your classes. In some cases people start classes at 8 a.m., meaning they would have to get up around 6 a.m. Due to the fact that you can't park beside your building, unless you are a Kraus or Founders resident, you have to go get your car. With the weather getting colder, the long walks from Kraus, North, Patterson, Harner and even Dodds start to get old. Many who do luck out and get to park by their building end up losing their spot and have to resort to the long haul.
There are about six commuter parking lots and about five resident parking lots. Although the number is almost even, the spaces within the parking lots are greatly different. Excluding the East Lake parking lot, since it is the "universal" lot for both residents and commuters, there is a greater number of commuter spaces compared to resident spaces. This is understandable, because commuters always have a car, unlike residents who live here so there really is no need for one. The main commuter parking lots have on average 50 spaces, however this number expands when you talk about the huge parking lot behind Eisenberg Classroom Building. Residents have on average 10-15 spaces, making it a great difficulty to park anywhere besides East Lake.
After taking all the facts into consideration, a good idea that should be brought up to the University would be to make half of the parking lots commuter and the other residential. Or to simply make more residential parking areas closer to the main buildings. Other universities do not allow freshmen to have cars, and this could also be a route that we could try to go down. If this problem is not fixed soon, there could be many more unhappy students here at Slippery Rock.
