Parking at BSU: We Need More Room

When it comes to parking at Bridgewater State University, one of the biggest issues, specifically for students who commute to college, is trying to find parking. The parking lots, when trying to find parking for morning classes are all usually filled up by eight o’clock. Because of this, commuter students are forced to either park in lots that are unauthorized for them, resulting in parking tickets from police, or are required to park in the student parking garage. The parking garage, according to “Bridgewater State’s Parking Change Hits Shops” on The Boston Globe, Bridgewater Police Chief Christopher Delmonte stated to reporters of how the parking at the garage “isn’t a parking issue; it’s a convenience issue”. With these two issues, commuting to college become a problem for students who can’t afford to live on campus, leading to more stress among the students, and may possibly lead to many commuter students choosing other colleges over Bridgewater.

My solution for this comes in two forms. The first solution is an expansion of the parking lots. While the Spring Street parking lot is spacious enough, it’s the remaining commuter parking lots that are in needing of expansions. The second solution is a reduction of “Faculty Parking Only” areas, and allowing students to park in some of the spaces there. With most of the “Faculty Parking Only” lots, specifically with parking lots on East Side of campus, there’s usually plenty of parking space left over, which could be used for commuter students.

With my solutions of expanding the parking lots and the reduction of faculty parking areas, more parking for commuter students will be available to them. From this, more parking spaces allows for better attendance rates among commuter students. According to “The Solution to the Parking Problem is...” on “darkwing.uoregon.edu”, Pete R. Hunt explains how “there are also those students— and let’s not forget faculty as well— who simply have to drive. Perhaps they live out of town or far away from a bus route.” Commuter students with more parking spaces given to them would boost the rate of them being able to find parking in the morning, which in turn would also decrease the number of tardiness for classes. Also with the solutions applied, we could also see fewer students receiving parking tickets by the local police. Since the parking areas will be more open to commuters with these changes, fewer students will feel the need to park in unauthorized areas in order to get to their classes on time. This not only puts a relief on the commuter students, but also to the local police, as the reduction of unauthorized parking would only benefit them and their time. Finally, the application of these solutions may even bring more students, specifically commuter students, to choosing Bridgewater State University over other colleges. According to Laura J. Horn and Jennifer Berktold on “stateuniversity.com”, they state how “approximately 86 percent of college and university students are defined as commuter students, that is, students not living in university-owned housing.” Since Bridgewater State University is a large commuter school, expanding the lots would only emphasize this statistic, and thus have more commuter students look at Bridgewater State for a convenient college.

In the end, with these changes made to the parking situation here on Bridgewater State University, we can perhaps have a better experience for everyone who has to deal with this situation.