No student likes to see the orange parking ticket placed on their windshield let alone when they see how much it costs. It seems as if UNI students and the Parking Services are almost constantly at war with one another. 

Students complain about limited parking, an unfair ticketing system, and prices of parking tags and tickets. Some students have noticed that when it comes to getting a ticket, students either park too long in a time-limited parking spot or park in the wrong section of a parking lot, it seems to be the roll of the dice on whether or not people get a ticket. Personally, I have parked in sections that were not listed on my parking tag and have not been ticketed yet other times I have been given tickets for being parked in the area I was assigned to park in the first place.

For those who come to campus before the fall semester begins, students are not allowed to park in areas that are closer to the dorms due to some random and senseless reason. I have appealed many of these parking tickets of this sort during my four years here and have luckily gotten most of them taken off my U-Bill. 

Luckily, students who live on-campus tend to have an easier time when it comes to dealing with UNI Parking Services, however, students living off-campus like junior Emma Pellegrino resorted to strictly walking to campus due to “how impossible it is to find parking spots.” 

Considering the recent winter weather, most students who decide to walk to campus from their apartments or houses are not having a great time being forced to walk despite having paid for a parking pass. Junior Keely Daman says, “As someone who commutes to campus, I worry every single day about finding parking. It would be nice to have B lot parking spaces that are closer to campus, rather than as far as the Wellness & Recreation Center and Gallagher Bluedorn.”  

Other students like sophomore Jenna Louch have to deal with the C Preferred (CP) parking lots that consist of students’ cars from Dancer, Bender, Campbell and Lawther. She says, “most days when you need to leave campus for groceries or to fill up on gas for the winter, there will almost always be a car that has taken your spot.”

Some students who pay the price of $100 for parking in the CP section are somewhat frustrated because they feel as if they are being overcharged if they have to park in other sections due to overcrowding. Others feel that UNI should address these frustrations by building one or two more parking lots around campus. 

For those of us who live on-campus during the winter, we have to shovel our cars out of the massive snow drifts after maintenance plows the parking lots. Despite this inconvenience to both faculty and students, I propose a possible solution to this particular problem. No student likes having to shovel snow just to get out of their parking spot, so why not have a few days during the winter months where students are politely asked to move their cars for short periods of time? I would be willing to move my car for some time throughout the week if it means not having to shovel snow. This solution ensures that maintenance can clear most parking lots, fewer students having to shovel out their cars and less ice for everyone to slip and fall on. 

Another solution, despite a source from the Department of Public Safety at UNI admitting that “there isn’t any immediate plans to add parking spaces on campus”, is having the area where the UNI President’s House is being demolished to be turned into an A/B parking lot. Since the building is being taken down due to maintenance costs, why not build something there that can create more revenue for the university and solve a problem that students have been experiencing? 

As long as some solution is found when it comes to students’ bad experiences with parking in or around campus, students will eventually have better experiences with UNI as a whole as well as the UNI Parking Division.