Anna Bialkowski
Editor-in-Chief
I know it’s a crazy take. For the three and a half years that I have been at FSC, parking has always been a lingering yet prominent issue with no direct solution.
I can say with full confidence that for the three and a half years I’ve been here, I really have not thought it was that bad. There have certainly been times where looping around to find parking while living on campus has been inconvenient. But there was always an open spot somewhere.
While the parking debacle has been a looming concern for FSC students, this issue reaches past just our small private college. Taking a look at one of our neighboring universities, the University of South Florida (USF), it is clear that adding parking garages alone does not actually solve the issue at hand.
USF student newspaper The Oracle reported in an article by Rachel Beaird that, “Students have been complaining about the parking problem for years, and rightfully so. Finding parking is often a struggle, with just over 20,000 parking spots on campus and more than 44,000 students on the main campus, according to USF’s website.”
While Indiana University (IU) just celebrated a huge win in the CFP National Championship, they are not celebrating many W’s in their parking game.
Senior marketing and apparel merchandising student at IU Julia Kowalczyk gives insight on what their parking situation is like. She explains that parking passes are around $150 but are very limited, restricting students parking availability to only a handful of places.
“I have a student pass and for me, it would be the most convenient to park at the business school,” Kowalczyk said. “I can’t park there with the student pass until after 5 p.m. so I would have to pay hourly to park there if I wanted to use it before 5.”
Kowalczyk explains that parking on campus for just one day could cost a student around $30, which adds up even on a few last minute occasions.
“Give students more access with [the parking passes],” Kowalczyk said. “I wouldn’t mind paying a little bit more if they get useful perks out of it.”
Kowalczyk also explains that adding more bus routes could be helpful for students, especially those living off campus. Right now, her route to campus is usually driving to the football stadium and then taking the shuttle to class, which is not only time consuming, but also inconvenient in cold or rainy weather.
Most of the on campus parking at IU is on Greek Row, as Kowalczyk explains, which is not the safest place to park.
“Most of the parking spots where you can park are on Greek Row, which normally have like 60 to 100 people living in [each house] and so there’s not really spots,” Kowalczyk said. “There’s limited spots at each of those chapters, and if you don’t get one in your lot, you’re stuck parking there. It’s all parallel parking, it’s not great, people’s cars get hit like on the weekends.”
FSC offers two pretty straight forward permit options. The first being a $60 basic permit that allows students to park on campus anywhere outside the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., and the second being a $250 permit allowing students to park on campus anytime, except for in restricted areas for events. The shuttle system is also convenient for students to take, and walking distances at FSC are no more than a mile to class, if you live on campus. Kowalczyk says that if you miss the bus at IU, you could be walking over two miles in one direction to class.
Spot availability is always going to be a problem. But in comparison to public colleges like USF and IU with student populations of 50,000 and 90,000, respectively, there’s a lot less competition for parking with FSC’s 3,300 students. I’m not saying that our parking situation is the best, but I don’t think you’re going to find any college that can accommodate every single student.
