My time at Alvernia has been great. The campus is small and beautiful, the people are kind, and the basketball games are almost always wild. But as a freshman, I have one issue with the school. Freshmen, while allowed to have a car on campus, must park in a lot that is almost a mile off campus. Still, this would not be bad if there were some way besides walking to get there. Alvernia claims that the shuttles make loops every five minutes meaning, that there should hypothetically be a shuttle down at the parking lot every five minutes. I can personally attest that this is very far from the truth. I have stood in the freezing cold for over half an hour before giving up and walking back to campus. It is ridiculous. Now, people always say to just call public safety. Been there, done that. Public safety will not give you a ride unless the shuttles are not running. Honestly, I could not tell you what public safety actually does besides stand at basketball games and ticket anyone and everyone they can.

A lot of times, I just park in a visitors spot and take my parking sticker off my window. However, there are approximately seven visitors spots on campus if you do not count those meant for the police academy visitors and admissions visitors (both of which I park in... sorry). And typically, all of these spaces are full. Now my question is, why are there so few visitors spaces? Alvernia always has something going on and there are people constantly on campus to visit. Would it not make sense to have a visitor's lot? As a student, I cannot even park on the street, so if I want to park close to campus, I have to park in a visitors spot. Sometimes it is very necessary to have my car close, like when I am unloading it after a weekend at home or have stuff from Walmart that needs to be taken into my dorm. On top of that, it would be nice to have my car on campus to avoid the entire process of getting to my car and returning. So much time is wasted, and what should be a twenty minute trip to Walmart becomes an hour and a half excursion.

So, Alvernia, whoever is in charge of parking on this campus, please look into this. Either move the freshman lot closer or put in more visitors lots for us to park in when we need to. I know we have the cash; the Plex is not cheap. Please, I am begging you.