I came to Carroll College in the fall of 2019 filled with excitement for new experiences, and a friendly community to learn. I left Carroll to study at Montana State University. I switched majors many times, and finally returned to Carroll in the fall of 2021.
The stress of not picking a major until junior year and transferring back and forth caught up to me, and I fumbled to get everything in before graduating.
But what I did not expect these past two years was the added stress of missing or being late to class due to a lack of parking.
Parking on campus has been an issue raised many times by students, yet there have been little to no changes. When I arrived at Carroll during my freshman year we were required to purchase parking passes that permitted parking in several different zones, typical on many college campuses.
But purchasing a parking pass did not necessarily mean we were guaranteed a spot, just that we wouldn’t be ticketed for parking where our pass was designated for.
Since that time, Carroll has moved to a cheaper option for students, or so we thought.
Now, we can get a parking pass as part of our tuition allowing us to park in any student lot on campus. However, if we do not pick up the “free” pass or forget to hang it and still park in a student lot, we are given a ticket. When confronted about this issue, Jason Grimmis the director of campus safety and security explained that this system is used to gain compliance with students and employees to adopt the parking rules.
“Students and Employees are expected to display the permit from their rearview mirror. If not done, they are subject to a legitimate citation. However, I am generally pretty lenient on this offense as long as the student comes to my office to collect their permit within a few days,” said Grimmis.
Grimmis did not specifically address my question of not having your pass hanging being a valid excuse but instead gave information on why security still tickets these vehicles.
“Security has found a pattern of behavior in the Campus Center lot (around the lunch hour) where students remove their student parking permits to disguise themselves while parked in Employee or Visitor Parking Lots,” said Grimmis.
Because of these claimed students who are removing passes to park in the Campus Center, many others are receiving violations for forgetting to hang passes all over campus. While this might not be a valid excuse, there might be ways to appeal these tickets. A list of all other invalid excuses can be found on Carroll’s website.
Another issue is the lack of available spaces for all of the passes they have given out. As a senior, I live off campus and commute to class each day, yet when I arrive there are rarely places to park. There have been days where I have parked in the Vans parking lot, or at the Brewhouse just to make it to class on time because I knew I would be ticketed if I parked in the guest lot by the Campus Center.
This issue has been brought to the attention of Grimmis, as well as the administration several times, and Grimmis says they are aware that parking is tighter than last year.
“I have issued out slightly fewer parking permits than we have available parking spaces, which includes spaces in the P.E. Center parking lot,” said Grimmis. ”This is a very small campus that does not accommodate “Convenient” parking.”
In the fall of 2021, I took Small Group from Brent Northup and a project was to find a problem on campus and gather the resources to solve it.
Almost every group chose parking lots in one way or another. Each group came up with a proposal and many talked to Grimmis about how we could solve the lack of parking by showing research from questionnaires of the student population. It has been a year since then and our concerns as students have not been addressed. As to what is being done now, Grimmis gave some insight into research on the issue.
“I have been working with Student Veteran Services on campus and between the two departments we have done a study of five employee parking lots to see if we can readjust the usage of those lots,” said Grimmis. ”If/when additional buildings are built on campus, parking lots/spaces are always part of the overall discussion.”
Finally, Grimmis explained the few changes that were made last year. The first is the opening of parking spaces in the row closest to Trinity Hall in the Campus Center which is now available to students. The only other change is that the library parking lot is now open 24 hours.
I understand that adding parking would cost a lot of money, but when staff lots are half full and students have no other options, it seems that there could be a reassignment of lots in some way to give students extra spaces. The few things that have been done help, but as seen with the continued issues in cramped parking it is obvious issues still need to be addressed. The lack of response to student requests shows that the administration is not doing everything it can to address student concerns.