by Shezad Khan
I started driving to school about a year ago because of how much faster it was than taking the bus. Well, that and the fact that it meant I could sleep in. I never realized how hard it would be to find parking near campus. It’s near impossible after 10 AM.
This makes me question why PSU has recently been reserving parking spots, and why they’ve mostly been reserving spots for the athletics department. Those of us who drive to school are paying tuition and paying to park, so it can seem a bit unfair when we need spots to park in so that we can attend class. This also brings up the question of whether or not the university deems athletics as more important than other departments, or even more important than students who aren’t athletes.
Sometimes we drive in circles around campus for a half an hour to find parking, sometimes we get lucky and find a spot right away, and sometimes we get to a lot just to see that there are “reserved” signs on spots that we could have used. It makes me curious as to whether or not the administration at PSU knows that parking is such a big problem.
Are there any solutions to this problem? Is there anything we, as students, can do to alleviate the pressures of Portland’s growing population when it comes to parking?