If you paid $85 to park in the Humphrey Coliseum lot even though your classes are on the opposite side of campus, like me, you’ve seen the recreational vehicles. Every weekend there’s a home game they swarm in, encroaching on our parking spaces. Granted, they are alumni, and they’re allowed to park their land yachts there on weekends, but I can’t help but notice they’re arriving earlier and leaving later with every passing home game.
The university allows for recreational vehicles to park in designated areas during football games. Each RV owner pays $50 for a weekend parking pass and is expected to arrive no earlier than 5 p.m. on Friday and to leave no later than 7 a.m. Monday.
Even though this rule is clearly explained to the visiting Bulldog fanatics, few follow these regulations, which causes problems for the whole student body. It’s a chain reaction: Those of us who are supposed to park in the coliseum lot can’t find an open spot, so we move to another lot, taking up other commuters’ parking spaces, so those students have to find another lot, and so on.
To make things worse, students are expected to move their cars before 5 p.m. on Fridays to make room for these massive intruders. The penalty for being late: Our cars get towed. It’s ridiculous these measures are taken considering some students are still in class at 5 p.m. It is beyond my understanding as to why we should be expected to follow these regulations when the people with RVs rarely follow the rules set out for them.
When I got to school the Monday after the Florida game, I was surprised to see a ridiculous amount of RVs still parked in the coliseum lot. Every parking spot was taken. Students were vehemently circling the lot like vultures, desperate to park their cars and get to class on time. Despite their efforts, most were unsuccessful and drove off frustrated.
There were no tow trucks and no tickets being issued to the RVs which lingered in our parking spaces. Where’s the justice? If those had been student cars, they would have been towed by 7:05 a.m.! Another injustice is these monsters do not stay in their designated areas. They always spill over to surrounding lots left open for students – but really, who cares about students? Who cares if we’re late for class or if we receive “commuter out of zone” citations because these mammoths take up over 50 percent of our assigned lots?
Each week it’s become progressively worse. More RVs arrive earlier and leave later every home game. The Thursday before the LSU game, there were three RVs already parked and hooked up to the generators in the parking lot behind Giles Hall. Although this isn’t my parking zone, it infuriated me. Who do these people think they are? It’s almost as if they don’t remember people have classes on Fridays and Mondays.
To be fair, these visitors mean no intentional harm. They only wish to support the football team and have a good time. It’s possible they don’t even realize how much they’re inconveniencing us. As annoyed as we get with them, in 30 years, we will pull our recreational vehicles into the same parking lots.
Nora Donnelly is a sophomore majoring in communication. She can be contacted at [email protected].