Parking at Wright State | Graphic by Bethany Althauser | The Wright State Guardian
With Wright State University seeing a rise in the number of students, the parking lots are becoming increasingly full. Due to students having a plethora of opinions on this, an interview was held in the library, asking students who came by about their thoughts.
Availability
One of the common complaints that some students have is their inability to find parking in the lots close to the buildings they want to park by.
Mya Farley is a sophomore biological science major who lives in the College Park community. They shared that they struggle to find parking near their apartment.
“College Park is [really] crowded,” Farley said. “They fill up every single space, so I have to park at like the bottom of this hill now.”
Farley shared that they feel like they have to arrive at places early in the morning if they want to get a spot closer to their buildings, but also said that they tend to favor walking while the weather is nice.
One anecdote that Farley shared detailed the branch of a bush scratching the side of their car, which they found irritating.
Pricing
Another common opinion of the students surveyed was that the parking passes are too expensive for what they offer.
Hudson Ellen, a second-year communication studies major, lives in the College Park apartments on campus and has a lot of feelings about parking.
“I already paid to go here, and then you’re gonna make me pay to park, and then you’re gonna make me pay extra to park well,” Ellen said, referring to the Rowdy spots. “I’m fundamentally against it, mainly because I don’t have one.”
Ali Mahir is a first-year commuter student at WSU who decided to invest in the Rowdy parking pass.
“The problem is, the price that I chose for long-term parking, $300 is just way too much,” Mahir said.
He went on to say that even though he has paid more for the Rowdy pass, he has not always been able to find a Rowdy spot.
“Sometimes I come in for class even early in the morning, and there’s no parking spot available at the front of lot 11,” Mahir explained.
Potential solutions
Each of the students had their unique takes on how the parking situation should be handled, most of which included lowering parking pass prices.
Ellen stated that he was “against parking lots,” but when asked to expand upon this opinion, shared a potentially expensive but long-term fix.
“I don’t want them to [tear] down a forest and build a parking lot,” he began, then said that WSU needs a “parking garage in the back, away from like, pretty stuff. Underground parking garage.”
Ellen went on to say he thinks it would be good to install a parking garage one day above or below Lot 4. He believes that this could fix the lack of parking spaces in a more long-term way.
