Christian Riha's Blog

One topic that always seems to get students at Morningside University easily irritated is parking. From the 100$ cost of the pass to never being able to find a spot anywhere that the passes allow for the students to park, this has been a reoccurring problem at the University. For this article, I wanted to get students at Morningside’s opinion on how they feel about the matter. 

One student that I interviewed was Jonah Kollbaum. Jonah is currently a senior so he has had to deal with the parking inconveniences for 4 years now. When I asked Jonah what his current stance was on the parking situation he told me that, “I feel like there should be more places to park because as a commuter, I do not have the opportunity to walk to my classes like some students.”

Another issue students have with parking is the amount of tickets that are given out all the time. “Pretty obsessive,” is how Jonah would describe it in his own words, “I understand that they make a profit off of the tickets, but I feel like it is unnecessary to charge students an additional 100$ every year for a parking pass.”

Alex Van Dyke is a Junior and practically had the same issues as Jonah had. “Even if you have a pass there are certain parking lots that you aren’t allowed to park in which doesn’t really make much sense.” Certain passes only allow a certain amount of lots that you are able to park in. For example, If you have a student parking permit, technically you are not allowed to park in the lot behind the cafeteria, it is supposed to be for commuter and faculty use only. 

Alex described the issuing of tickets as, “Ridiculous.” Further stating, “If they can’t even accommodate students for a parking lot, I don’t think they should be handing out tickets in the first place, let alone as expensive as they are. 

Another student that I interviewed was a Senior named Mason Williams. Mason has attended Morningside for 4 years and he said that the parking situation has always felt like a, “System set up to fail.” 

“Everyone has class times at the same time so trying to fit everyone into the same lots is very difficult.” Mason has received 5 tickets since attending Morningside and every ticket that he has received was given to him when he was in his designated lot that his pass allowed him to be parked in. 

“They should at least have an understanding that since there are such few parking spots at this school some students are going to have to park in compromised spots whether they like it or not to be able to get to their classes.”

All three of these students that were interviewed were also asked if there was one thing that they could implement or change about the current parking situation, regardless of money, what would it be?

Alex thought that, “Increasing the size of the parking lots to actually accommodate for the amount of students that park there,” would be a nice start. We are told that Morningside has about 1600 undergraduate students, however at times it seems like much more when all of the parking lots are full at about 9:15 in the morning. 

“Decrease the amount of tickets that are handed out,” was an idea that Mason had discussed. “I find it kind of overkill, just giving students tickets on top of tickets because giving out a ticket does not solve the issue, it only deters it away.”

Students at Morningside seem to be very passionate and aggressive when asked about this topic, I believe that it is because the students feel like they are getting every penny pulled out of their pockets.

“It’s just frustrating paying so much to go to this school and then to add a parking pass on top if it makes it much worse,” Jonah Kollbaum discussed. “I should be able to park wherever I want whenever I want because I am definitely paying for all of this not only now, but in the future too. I will have to be paying this school back so much money, why would I want to add more money just because I parked somewhere that I’m not supposed to?”

Another question also remains to be answered amongst all students that attend Morningside, will they ever implement or change the way that parking is handled around the school? Or will they continue to have no remorse for the students and hand out tickets at the same rate as always.

~ by Christian on .