Many people were skeptical as to how successful the changes to campus traffic patterns were going to be. However, it is not the alteration of Five Points or the rerouting of Bully Boulevard that has some students stewing. More than a few commuter students are very unhappy with the changes that have been made to parking on campus.
Every parking lot on Mississippi State’s campus is now zoned for specific groups of students, staff and faculty. At the heart of the new system are decals, which are color coded, that cost $50 to purchase. Even though the new system is more complex and more expensive for students, it is neither the price nor the added complexity of zoned lots that created many tense situations at the Coliseum ticket office late last week.
The problem is that many people were surprised when they discovered that they could not purchase a parking decal for the commuter parking zone that they wanted. Many students were aware that commuter decals would be issued on a first come, first served basis.
However, many were deceived into thinking that by registering online that they could reserve a decal for their desired parking zone. Unfortunately, registering early online was not enough. To ensure your place in the coveted commuter west parking zone, you also had to beat the crowd to the Coliseum ticket office.
It is for this reason that I believe these commuter students are justified in their anger. The university attempted to get the word out about how the new system was going to work before school started. But the e-mail that was sent out failed to communicate to students that if they did not come quickly to the ticket office, they would have to settle for a Coliseum commuter decal.
I think someone may have underestimated how big of an issue parking is for some commuter students. If the idea would have been successfully communicated, students would have understood that when they came to the ticket office they might not get a parking decal in the zone they wanted. Many assumed they would be issued a decal for the zone they registered for online, and that if the zone was full during school that they would have to park in overflow parking. This is why so many people became angry when they arrived at the ticket office to find only coliseum parking decals being distributed. A few of the gated parking lots were also partially empty last week; this fact does not help the defenders of the new parking policy.
While I believe these commuter students were justified in their anger, I do not defend their actions. The parking services employees who were working in the ticket office were not the ones who should have had to deal with the verbal abuse that many of these emotional students inflicted on them.
If anything were to be done by the administration at this point, I would say that those employees should receive several days paid vacation for having to suffer the brunt of the consequences for a policy decision that they did not make. It was okay for the students to be angry about a policy that they didn’t agree with, but they should have directed that anger in the form of an e-mail or phone call to a policy maker. Shouting, whining and telling your life story to the parking employees didn’t help anyone’s situation.
However unhappy some people may be about the new parking policy, the reality is that it is in effect, and it appears to be accomplishing the goals that it was supposed to meet. Already there seems to be an increase in the number of bicycles on campus and significantly more people appear to be using the shuttle system. Three people have already asked if they could carpool to campus with me. So the silver lining to this whole situation may be that we are on our way to becoming a more pedestrian friendly campus with a healthier student body.
But until things settle down, I’m going to try and figure out a way to prevent someone from stealing my commuter west decal.