Student
parking used by faculty
Parking:
Instead of their 2,079 allocated spots,
faculty has been seen parking in student
spots.
By
Emmy Gonzalez
On-line Forty-Niner
Cal
State Long Beach students are not receiving
all the open parking spaces they paid for.
Students
said they have noticed employees of the
university are parking in the general parking
spaces students pay for instead of parking
in their own restricted parking spaces.
"They
should park in their designated spaces,
especially with the parking situation,"
CSULB student Chris Penton said. "We
need all the spaces we can get."
One
student, who did not want to be identified,
said his concern is that students have to
pay money for parking, and he does not feel
it is fair that staff take general parking
away from students when the staff has designated
parking with plenty of open spaces.
"Students
already have a hard time finding parking
and they need the open spaces the staff
is taking," the student said.
The
university's parking and transportation
services has two designated parking categories.
There is general parking for anyone who
needs to park on campus. General parking
users usually purchase permits for an entire
semester for $63. CSULB students and daily
users who pay $1.75 to park on campus for
the day are the ones who mostly fall under
that category.
The
second category available is restricted
parking. Restricted parking is mainly for
faculty and staff of the university. Most
restricted parking is marked with white
bumpers with the words "employee parking"
to help differentiate between the restricted
parking from the general parking.
"Restricted
parking allows individuals with this pass
into any gated parking lot and park in general
parking," senior director of Parking
and Transportation Services, Tom Bass said.
Faculty
and staff are allowed to park in general
parking and not get cited.
The
university has about 12,450 parking spaces
throughout the campus. About 2,079 spaces
are employee/restricted parking, and about
8,797 are for general parking spaces.
Residential
halls take up about 618 spaces, and meter
and carpool spaces take up another 595 spaces.
Accessible parking spaces, like handicap
parking take up another 225 spaces on campus.
Another
concern raised is that there are always
open spaces available in the restricted
lots that students may not use.
"If
a student were to park in a faculty spot,
he would get a ticket," said the CSULB
student who does not want to be identified.
Bass
said the university is not here to take
away students' money with citations.
"We
are a service provider," Bass said.
"Citation revenue goes into a general
fund that helps pay for the campus shuttles.
It provides the alternate transportation
students use."
The
$63 fee for parking helps pay for the maintenance
of the lots, the construction of new parking
structure and staff salaries in and transportation
services. Bass said he recognizes the problems
with campus parking and the frustration
students have. He said they would be announcing
some new plans for alternate transportation
on campus to help alleviate the parking
problem.
"They
should park in their designated spaces,
especially with the parking situation. We
need all the spaces we can get."
- Chris Penton,
student
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