Since the start of the fall semester, students are spending more time finding parking than rapist Brock Turner spent in jail.
That’s right.
For the past three months, there have been sightings of sedans, two-door coupes and even four-door extended cab pickup trucks spewing invisible emissions from extended hours of aimlessly waiting for an open parking spot to appear near their class.
Like alcoholics, abusing family members, driving drunk and failing to appear in court are all symptoms of the disease that is alcoholism.
Similarly, parking across campus, avoiding the $93 pass and risking a $35 fine for parking on campus without a parking pass are all symptoms of the disease that is CSUB’s lack of preparedness for an expanding university and inadequate parking to support its students.
The packed parking lots have even driven students to park across campus by Finish Line and the Marketplace, where citations have reportedly been seen on the windshields of vehicles who sport CSUB memorabilia and/or expired parking passes that were once $45.
It’s apparent CSUB students are struggling with one of two things: The lack of parking on campus or the refusal to pay $93 for a 3 1/2 by 2 inch slab of adhesive, which leaves your windshield stained with a mucosal grime for the rest of your car’s lifespan and ultimately determines whether you park on or off campus.
Before the semester system, quarter parking passes were $45 and with a combined three-quarters in a year, and that added to a collective $135.
Since the switch to semesters, the price of parking passes rose to $93 and with a total of two semesters in a year, that’s a whopping 22-page sociology textbook or for a more sweet understanding, $186.
The arithmetic of the price increase does not seem justifiable because students pay more for the same amount of time they did when CSUB was on the quarter system.
With that type of growth, you’d expect to see more voluble efforts to building parking garages, lots or even providing a shuttle service for students who don’t like putting steps on their FitBits that cost a parking pass and a half.
Because the hike in prices seems more like a scam rather than a logical repercussion of the switch from quarter to semester, students are taking matters into their own hands and making their own parking spots along Kroll Way near the cul-de-sac before entering CSUB on the west side of campus, and as previously stated, the Marketplace and Finish Line are no strangers to CSUB student vehicles.
However, the circumstances that motivate students to avoid campus and risk parking their cars elsewhere are what needs to be addressed.
The problem here isn’t that students can’t find a parking spot or that prices are too high, it’s that our administration and facilities management lack a big picture mindset.
Rather than focusing on CSUB in 15 years from now, let’s focus on it today. Let us deal with the issues as they arise, instead of preparing for the future.
Like the color of a cement parking curb, there is a light gray lining to this debacle.
Facilities management is set to begin development on a new parking lot adjacent to J and K, where one could get away with parking without a permit if lucky.
The development would have begun sooner, but the Bakersfield Business Conference had claimed the land prior to facilities’ bid to establish new parking there.
Once again, if the snooze button hadn’t been pushed that fourth time, we’d potentially be sitting on new parking.
But the development will begin as soon as the conference is over at the start of week Oct. 10.
Our professors tell us to start on that research project due at the end of the semester during week two to avoid falling behind, the same should apply to a university and its infrastructure.
