Israel Asby
Everyone is on edge to find good parking, but we have only so many available spots. With the parking lots being a madhouse every 20 minutes, many students can’t help but complain.
“This is probably the worst parking situation I have ever seen,” said Mandy Webster, a senior accounting major from Fort Rucker.
Luckily for Webster, she has a slightly better situation than most. She and her daughter have alternating schedules, so one drops the other off to make it in time for class, while the other spends about an hour trying to find parking.
Webster suggested that students go to campus an hour before class to avoid being late and that the school start assigning parking lots by majors.
“(My daughter) actually missed her first class,” Webster said. “She was 30 minutes early, and she could not find parking.”
Kaylie Denny, a junior social work major from Jasper, had a similar experience when she got to campus 30 minutes before the start of her class. However, she was not late because she settled on a farther parking lot.
“I have to park at Trojan Arena and walk all the way back,” Denny said.
Anna Jacobson, a senior nursing major from Union Springs, has also decided to choose distant parking lots in exchange for stress-free parking.
“I’m OK with (parking) a little farther away, and again, it’s just a lot less stressful that way. It’s great when I get the close spot, but when it’s a little farther away, it’s no big deal. … Really, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that far.”
So really, you could spend an hour trying to park as close to your class as possible, or you could park half an hour early a little farther away and spend 20 minutes walking.
For those who live on campus, Jacobson suggests walking as much as possible instead of taking the car from its space and timing the search for a spot.
“I try to time it so I’m coming back right when we are swapping classes, so when people are getting out of class, and they go out to their cars and are leaving, that’s the best time to come in. … It’s really the only time people are moving their cars, right at that opening; otherwise you might not get a spot.”
Between constructing elaborate parking strategies and stressing over making it to class on time, some Trojans are choosing to ignore the more convenient parking spots in favor of the more reliable ones.
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