When is the administration going to fix the parking situation? Current Clemson students ask this question every semester. Even last year in February of 2020 we here at The Tiger published another Outlook article addressing parking issues on campus.
Ask students how they feel about parking on campus, and their response will most likely be passionately negative. Most students have to purchase a parking pass, whether residential or commuter. Yet, it seems like everyone is still fighting to find places to park. Even though many employee spots are empty these days due to less traffic on campus, some students pay for metered parking as a last resort because they cannot park in the coveted green spots.
For underclassmen living on campus, having a car makes campus living less complicated, especially if they come from far away. Whether running errands, going to a neighboring town like Pendelton or Central or leaving campus for alone time or an event, having a car gives the student independence. Even if you do not have a car, the Freshman’s bonding experience includes finding someone to take you to church, events, games and many other situations that require transportation. Even with all of these pros of having a car, you will soon meet the cons as you begin to encounter parking problems.
As an underclassman, you are assigned a lot to park in somewhat close to your dorm. Even if those are full, there are some overflow lots that anyone can park at, but they are quite the hike from the dorms. Even though these overflow lots seem like a solution, they bring problems themselves. Transportation services do not pick up near R-5 or R-6 during the daytime, and the R-6 bus route does not run on the weekends. You cannot call Tiger Transit if you arrive on campus after 2 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon. For safety, sometimes you have to ride a shuttle or Uber back to your dorm. If you are lucky, you may get an off-campus friend to give you a ride back to the dorms, but you are often stuck and must walk nearly 2 miles back to wherever you live while carrying all of your belongings.
As you move off-campus, however, struggles continue. In regular times, commuter lots are often full, and the orange spots scattered around campus are tough to come by. Ridiculously, the effort to find parking applies to both faculty and students. There is nothing worse than being in a hurry to get to your classes, only to find that there is nowhere to park. Students often encounter a professor or peer walking into class late due to parking scarcity. The scarcity of parking makes planning to arrive early irrelevant. Every year, Clemson sells thousands of parking passes to students and faculty alike. It is becoming increasingly suspicious that more passes are sold than spots available to park, especially with the growing number of accepted students.
Even with the overflow issue, there are always those cars that are parked with the wrong or no parking pass at all. It is challenging to solve the parking problem when the campus parking services consistently do their job and show no mercy while scouring the parking lots. Parking on campus is a tough problem, and there does not seem to be a solution from CUSG or the University in the works. So, we will keep asking and eventually we will find a solution. All we can do is hope for the Clemson higher-ups to approve a parking garage soon and to find a parking spot in the meantime.
