JAMIE TERRILE, copy editor
Regardless of exams, presentations, two-hour long lectures and just sitting in class in general, sometimes the worst part about going to school is having to deal with the campus parking lots.
That said, I am not writing this to complain about the lack of parking space, the outrageous parking pass prices or the “parking police,” as annoying as they can be. I am writing this to express how terrified and bewildered I am whenever I am forced to enter campus parking lots.
Although campus is within a one-mile radius of the majority of students’ residences, the amount of commuters to school via car is astonishing. Sure, there are plenty of walkers, bikers and boarders, but the number of vehicles that wheel into the parking lots surrounding the university minutes before classes start is overwhelming.
We all have days where nothing is going to our advantage. We wake up too late, or our roommate is using the shower when we need it.
We scramble to finish that last paragraph of our paper due in three-and-a-half minutes, all the while starving and just wanting to sit down and eat a substantial breakfast before beginning an already stressful day.
During these days, it is understandable to jump in your car and rush to the parking lot closest to your building, not minding parking in a 30-minute parking spot, knowing good and well the odds of escaping a ticket from the parking police are against you.
It is the students who repeatedly wheel into an already full parking lot, 10 to 15 minutes prior to class starting, who wait for the students from the ending classes to trickle out. They circle the parking lot like scavengers, trying to snag the first spot they can.
It is the students who spot a potential prospect from afar, bravely trailing into the parking lot towards the general area of where they’d parked their car 50 minutes ago.
It is the students who follow and hunt these prospects down, darting down the parking lot and wheeling around the corners like Nascar drivers, narrowing in on their parking spot and throwing on their blinkers, claiming this spot before another vehicle can swoop in and steal it from them.
These are the people who make entering the campus parking lots a terrifying ordeal. It’s like some crazy, competitive and stressful game just to snag a parking spot in order to get to class on time.
Working up enough courage to enter these battlegrounds has become somewhat of a challenge, and I find myself wanting out of them as quickly as I enter, for fear of being ran over or smacked into.
My wish is that more students could avoid driving their cars to campus as much and try walking, biking, or boarding to classes so that the numbers of psychotic, scavenger-like, spot-swooping vehicles decrease, and my chances of being struck by a driver with more intimidating driving skills than my own do the same.
