Surprise, on-campus parking sucks

Parking isn’t sexy.

High school seniors aren’t going to visit Utah State’s campus this spring and say “Gee, the Aggie Terrace seems dandy.” They won’t ask — because they won’t know any better — why hundreds of students are parked down the hill in the stadium parking lot. There is nothing further from the mind of a future college student then where they’re going to physically park their car.

That’s why the powers that be spent a ton of student money on the Aggie Rec Center, I imagine. The ARC is, without a doubt, an awesome addition to campus. But it also serves as a nice recruiting tool — a fancy rock climbing wall inside a massive recreational facility is the type of thing that gets noticed when kids are looking into potential college destinations.

Likewise, rumors of a new student center have circulated for years, and the addition of a formal testing center seems imminent. None of these things are inherently bad, but it does indicate a kind of disconnect between what the university thinks students want, and what students actually need.

Students need parking.

They could also go for a west entrance to the library and the preservation of the glorious snow-duck currently gracing the quad with its presence, because that thing is as much a piece of art as anything else on campus — but mostly the parking thing.

It won’t attract new students to the school like the ARC, nor will it be as aesthetically pleasing as the new business building. But so what? Students, teachers and the hundreds of on-campus workers all need it. Not in ten years or whenever it’s convenient to get around to it — there needed to be more parking on campus, like, four years ago.

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful for what is one of the nicest-looking college campuses around. The renovations happening to Maverik stadium, the nice view of the Legacy fields from the top floor of the brand new ARC, all of it makes Utah State a cool place to get an education.

But doesn’t it seem kind of irresponsible for USU to keep accepting thousands more students every fall without any contingency plan for where they’re going to park — never mind where they’re going to live, which is another issue altogether?

I get that money is a sticky subject, particularly with how student fees are spent and what campus improvements are made. Fee board meetings and other politics most students don’t care to understand stand in the way of any real communication between students and the administration. It doesn’t have to be complicated though — there’s not enough parking on campus, so make it a priority and fix it.

— Logan Jones is a junior majoring in journalism. He doesn’t have a car. Contact him with feedback at Logantjones@aggiemail.usu.edu or on twitter @Logantj