If you are an OU alumnus, current student or frequent visitor you would know that parking anywhere on the OU campus is a hassle. You're constantly checking and double checking which floor of a parking garage you're on to make sure that you don't get a ticket. You're frustrated because you've been driving around several different parking lots on campus for over twenty minutes trying to find a spot, and then didn't. You're questioning if it was even worth buying a permit to not have a guaranteed spot every day. You're thinking and talking to other people about how you think the OU parking services sold more permits than what they had space for. Click here for an OU parking map. When you look at that map pay attention to the colors because the colors are different types of permits and mean different things to different visitors/residents/commuters.
Commuter parking on campus is terrible. It really is. I think with housing it's different because obviously, they don't move their cars every single day unless they leave campus every day. When I lived on campus last year in Headington College I only drove somewhere on Fridays or the weekends and since everyone had left, I could always find a parking spot.
The OU Daily admitted that Cross is currently under 25% capacity and students are frustrated with ongoing construction on the buildings which basically means that OU isn't making their money back on their million-dollar dorms. Cross has their own parking garage that's just for housing students. Imagine all of that parking! Students who live there are really frustrated because most of the amenities that they were promised aren't even done yet. I think OU took the failures from the Headington and Dunham colleges and put newer and better ideas in Cross. My roommate Maddie and I always thought that we should have a little kitchen area, and in Cross, they have that in their rooms minus the stove (I guess because they can't trust college students with a stove unless you live in Traditions.) But on every floor, there's a full kitchen that students can use.
I mean it's only the second week of classes and I hope that parking gets better but it is really frustrating when I pay a lot of money for parking and having to end up parking at the Lloyd Noble Center and take the shuttle bus to campus. Parking has always been something that OU can improve on, it's not just something no one's ever dealt with before until this year. However, President Gallogly can fix this by finding the budget to build new parking lots for commuters all across campus. I think it's possible that one of the biggest problems they're having is just finding the space around the center of campus to build these lots because there's not a lot of space for it. Another solution is to have Freshmen park at Lloyd Noble and the upperclassmen who live on campus and the commuters can park in the garages and surrounding parking lots. I realize a lot of people may not like that idea but there are so many freshmen that drive to campus and never move their cars. There could also be more shuttle buses running around campus more often. It's supposedly only a 5-minute wait between buses but I've waited 30+ minutes just waiting to get on a bus because the lines are so long for the bus. The bus drivers try to get as many people on the bus as they can at one time. The other day the bus driver said, "everyone standing up, form two lines, pick a side!" Now to me I'm thinking, "well at least I'm sitting down but OU definitely needs more busses." They shouldn't be allowed to do that sometimes, it's not right to just pack 150-200 people on a bus and squish all together for the sake of being on the bus to get to Lloyd Noble. I have pictures of this but I've decided not to share them out of respect for everyone else on the bus and their right to privacy.
So who knows? Maybe we will see progress and change happening in the 2018-2019 year. Maybe something will be done more about parking on campus. What do you think should happen and how do you suggest that they improve it?
