The parking crisis isn’t really a crisis at all
Like the metallic ticking of a spring-driven timepiece, life at LSU often follows a familiar pattern of monotony. Classes, parking complaints, exams. Classes, parking complaints, exams. At this newspaper, angry letters about parking and the men and women in uniform who enforce the rules are as regular as the dusty winds that blow off the campus’s ubiquitous construction sites. Last semester when he met with The Reveille staff, Chancellor Emmert said that parking was one of the two or three issues he is asked about most frequently. That’s right, parking, a topic so peripheral to the central mission of this or any other university it’s laughable.
That’s why it was refreshing to pick up The Reveille last Wednesday and read the letters to the editor of two students willing to offer a fresh take on an old issue and sign their names to it. Emilie Speyrer and Laird Wilson both addressed the question of parking for students who commute and found the real problem has nothing to do with parking and everything to do with student attitudes. I strongly concur with their analysis and would like to add (with no desire to insult an honored lunch meat) that at LSU at least, complaints about lack of parking are a bunch of baloney.
Fact no. 1: There are more than enough parking places to go around.
Fact no. 2: The real problem is students who are unwilling to walk.
It doesn’t take an advanced degree in mathematics to figure out that if you drive into one of the big campus lots at 9:30 a.m. and cruise the desirable areas in search of a spot to ease into, you are probably going to miss a sizeable chunk of the class that begins at 9:40 a.m. Sure, you might get lucky, but the odds are against it. In my three years as an LSU student, arriving at school at different times and in different places, I have never failed to find a place to park my car. The spot has sometimes been on the edge of campus but always within a 10-minute walk of my class. Not, in my opinion, a serious hardship.
My complaint with parking at LSU is neither with the system nor with the people in the Office of Parking, Traffic, and Transportation. They do a fantastic job under difficult conditions. My problem is the scofflaws who refuse to come a little earlier and walk, the inconsiderate ones who leave their cars in handicapped or loading zones and then complain bitterly when they come back to find a ticket neatly tucked under the windshield wiper.
That’s why my heart leaps up when I behold the tow trucks revving their engines in front of the Public Safety building on South Campus Drive. There is nothing quite like the smell of diesel exhaust in the morning, and the sight of a car — or, especially, an SUV — being hoisted by one end and towed off to the Impound Lot has the same exhilarating effect as a strong cup of Community dark roast.
Now if the parking people would only crack down on the hard-hat crowd who have been blocking the sidewalks around Hodges Hall with their cars and trucks every day since the semester began …
Richard Buchholz