Oracle Online

Taking out enough loans to buy an expensive imported car each year, just to pay for school, is a brutal reality. Watching your hard-earned cash from a summer job retreat from your wallet as each heavy new book gets rung up at the bookstore is a frustrating fact. But being forced to take more money from the food and party fund to pay for a parking permit only to find yourself constantly cruising the parking lot, praying and waiting for people to walk out to their cars and feeling like a creep when you watch and hope they’ll leave expediently, is a gut-wrenching offense.

Overselling parking permits cheated everyone who bought them. Students who had late classes and commuted to school had little chance to find an available parking spot. For students living on campus, leaving during the day was not an option unless their schedules could fit an extra ten-minute delay for parking when they returned to school.

After driving down the same row in the parking lot for the sixth time, the empty “visitor” parking spots start to look especially tempting and easy. Taking an unoccupied special spot is a foolish gamble, though, because tickets can be promptly issued for parking in the wrong place in the lot. Thirty minutes and one $25 ticket later, the visitor parking doesn’t look like such a swell choice any more, I’ve learned. But then again, neither did the developing nausea from continuous circling and searching in the parking lot.

With the changes effective this year, a common complaint may be remedied. Freshmen, unfortunately, were disadvantaged by the parking permit system improvements, but something had to be done. Whether or not these changes will successfully affect the worsening state of parking on campus, it is satisfying to see an eager attempt being made. Maybe somebody started to notice all the loud cursing from the back of the parking lots.