Royal Purple

Issue date: 2/20/08 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Alison Wisneski A car sits in a parking lot, buried by snow. Parking Services, in order to clear the parking lots of these conditions, chose to move cars from residential lots to commuter lots Feb. 11-12.

This winter season has put an enormous strain on people of all walks of life: on-campus students walking to class, off-campus students driving to class, plow drivers clearing the roads and parking lots, and police officers dealing with everyday fender benders.

One of the many problems that have risen out of the record amount of snow on the ground is the constant battle for parking for students. Snow has covered painted lines in parking lots, causing students to park awkwardly all across campus. Overnight blanketing of snow has resulted in many students not being able to move their vehicles from parking lots and has prevented many off-campus students from being able to travel into Whitewater. The weather has also caused the entire campus to shut down.

Parking Services Director Robert Brecklin said the intense amounts of snow fall leading up to last week limited their options on when they could remove the snow. "The overtime budget for the year is shot," Brecklin said. "We couldn't do it on a weekend."

Instead Brecklin worked with the Residence Hall Association and Whitewater Student Government to come up with an alternative. They went with a plan that had been previously used before: move cars out of the residential lots and into commuter lots for the day.

Clearing the residential lots this way was a well-intentioned plan by the university, but the solution led to another problem.

When commuters drove onto campus, they were greeted by full parking lot after full parking lot. There were literally no spots available in every lot, because the lots normally used by commuting students were filled by displaced on-campus residents. Trains of cars traveled from one lot to the next only to find the same outcome. Students who were unprepared for the sudden lack of parking spaces and being nearly late for class double parked, parked in metered spots, parked in administrative spots and even parked in handicapped spots.

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