Jack Rawlings
After reading several pieces in the Tropolitan, I have decided to give my opinion on the parking issue hoping that it will be published, thus putting the parking issue to rest.
Take it from a guy who first set foot on the Troy campus back in 2007 and thought, right along with most students who were here at that time, that we could change the same parking problems we have today. It is not going to change.
Year after year, it is the same excuses from Herbert Reeves, the dean of students. The parking problems, along with the same old excuses not to fix the problem, will be here long after we leave.
It is not an issue of having money to spend. It is not a convenience issue. It is not an issue of where to put more parking spaces. It is an issue that they simply do not care, and why should they?
Building the university’s image with big, new shining buildings is much more important because it is attractive to the parents and students; and that turns into money in the form of tuition and fees. There are parking fees, but they probably amount to a few dollars toward the university by the end of the year.
It is not like Walt Disney World, whose bottom line would be affected if it did not have adequate parking for all of the theme parks. I assure you that if parking did affect Disney’s bottom line, it could have parking spaces striped out within a week to take up the slack.
This is not going to happen for you. Even with the parking problems as is, Troy University brings in more students each year and there seems to be a bumper crop of new students this year. Even with all the parking issues, the cause for the increase is the big, shiny new facilities and there is more on the way.
This university has been renovating and putting up new buildings since my arrival in 2007, and the only notable parking addition is the arena lot. Students do not want to use that lot because it is too far away, and all that does is give the powers to be an excuse to blame the problem on the students by saying it is a convenience problem instead of a parking problem.
This is easy for the faculty and staff to say, since they have reserved parking close to their workplaces. I am sure their reactions would be similar to the local tornado alarms going off if their spaces are ever trespassed on.
I am sorry to say that all this complaining and the circulation of a petition are for nothing. According to the latest edition of the Tropolitan, this online parking petition is not being taken seriously, anyway. Like all the other complaints, they will soon fizzle out, and the students who complain will come and go.
The only thing the university will do is pacify the problem long enough to get the current complainers out and ready itself for the new complainers coming in. It’s an endless circle where nothing will be achieved.
Σχόλια