This school year, quite a few changes have occurred related to parking at CWU. These include the price of parking permits, a student lot being turned into a faculty lot, the way students can submit appeals and a  decrease in the number of available parking spots, due to more students choosing to have a car on campus.

According to Program Specialist of Parking Services Trish Swanson, the price of all parking permits has increased 10 percent this year.

This is not the only change that has occurred that may inconvenience students; one of the student lots, E-14, was turned into faculty lot. In its place, lot F-15 has become a general parking lot.

There have also been changes in the way students can handle their appeals of parking tickets, in that Students can now submit their appeals online. According to Swanson, there has been some confusion with this since some students do not have their vehicles registered online. Once vehicles are registered online with CWU Parking Services, the student driving the vehicle can appeal the ticket.

Appeals are then sent to the CWU Parking Appeals Board, which is made up of faculty, staff and student representatives. The Parking Appeals Board meets once a week to look over the different appeals, and it has been in charge of doing so for quite a while, according to senior and student representative for the Parking Appeals Board Arber Demiri. Demiri said that the board usually makes decisions pretty quickly, within a few minutes, but that there are things that impact whether or not they grant an appeal.

“If people come in person, we are more likely to reduce the fine because it shows they care,” Demiri said. “When people park in ADA spots, we don’t take kindly to that.”

Demiri also mentioned how having a board that appeals parking tickets can be beneficial to students who get tickets on campus.

“[The board] allows students to appeal the tickets they get without having to go to the court,” Demiri said. “There are a lot of tickets that are handed out weekly, so if it all went to the lower courts, that would probably congest it, there would be too many people there trying to appeal tickets.”

Another change is that more first-year students are deciding to bring their cars on campus, so parking is more difficult to find.

Returning student and second-year running start student Sarah Syverson said that she always hears people complaining about how difficult it is to find parking on campus.

“I’ve also heard people complain about parking and it makes sense, because they all pay all this money and they don’t even get a parking spot most of the time,” Syverson said.

First-year student Nathan DeVore lives on campus and usually parks his car behind Barto Hall. Devore said that he chose to bring his car on campus because of the convenience of being able to drive home at anytime.

“I knew there was transit around to Yakima, but having a for sure ride home and not relying on others for a ride is an advantage of having a car on campus,” DeVore said.

Syverson said she prefers commuting to campus from Cle Elum on the Bellair Shuttle Service over purchasing a parking pass because parking is not guaranteed.

“I think commuting is more convenient,” Syverson said. “It would be difficult to have your car on campus, there’s never any parking and it’s expensive.”