COMMENTARY: Students Disagree with New Neighborhood Parking Restrictions

Photo+by+Travon+Butler

Photo by Travon Butler

The MSU Spokesman

Let’s cut right to the chase! The parking at Morgan State University sucks. There is absolutely no parking here on campus for the students and hell, the staff members have a hard time parking, too.

And what happened this semester? The on-street parking became more restricted. When students came back from winter break they were shocked to find that parking on the west side of Perring Parkway—which had been mostly unrestricted during school hours—was changed to one-hour parking between the hours of 7 a.m. and 9 p.m.
For students, it went from being hard to find parking to being nearly impossible. You’re constantly riding up and down the block looking for a spot. You ride around wasting time and gas and by the time you do find a spot it’s only good for one hour. You can spend more time looking for parking than you actually spend attending a 50-minute class.
But wait. Don’t let it be a Tuesday or Thursday where the classes are two hours long. Then you have two options: either piss your professor off and leave during class to ride around and search for another spot or gamble with receiving a parking ticket. And that’s something most college students can’t afford.
The whole parking situation here is just ridiculous. The meter maids around here are ridiculous too. They really need to calm down. Why are they so anxious to ticket students who are trying to learn?  If you are a student at Morgan and you drive a car, you always have to worry about your car being towed.
Even though the garages are free for commuter students, they are too far to walk to, especially at night when students have late classes. If those classes are in the communications building, you really don’t want to walk all the way to either one of the garages—especially when it’s raining of snowing.
So what do I do?  I definitiely don’t want any tickets, and I don’t want my car towed – which has happened before.
Someone really needs to change the parking rules and come to an agreement with how this parking issue can be solved.
Do they really need to restrict parking on the west side of Perring Parkway to one hour? And if so, do they really need to have those restrictions from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.? With all the empty spaces across the street during the day, I don’t think that’s all necessary.  Let’s change the hours, to make life for the students a little easier.

This article expresses the personal views of Morgan State University senior Latrice Eddy, and do not reflect the views of Morgan State University or The Spokesman.