The only thing worse than having to go to class at 8 a.m. is having to leave an extra 20 minutes early just to guarantee a parking spot for the day. It's no doubt that Murray State's parking is a big issue on campus.
When asked how long it takes to find a parking spot, multiple students gave me answers with an average time of 10-15 minutes. That's 900 minutes of wandering around, wasting gas, and wasting time. Junior special education and elementary education major Chloe Brian said she spends most of her morning looking for a spot to park in and usually ends up parking in the farthest lot from campus anyway."I leave 30 minutes before my class to try and find a parking spot, and sometimes even the farther parking lot is filled," Brian said. "I spend a lot of money to attend college and $75 for a parking pass, so I should be able to find one without circling for 30 minutes even if it is far away. Murray is becoming bigger than most people think. Instead of building new buildings every year, one year we should build a parking garage." Francie Ray, parking supervisor for Public Safety and Emergency Management, stated in a previous interview with The News that there are close to 7,000 parking spots available to the university. In the previous five years, Ray said the university has added at least eight new parking lots. The last lots added before this interview were yellow-zone lots near James H. Richmond Residential College and the parking lot at Heritage Hall. The problem with these lots is that they in no way help the problem of parking before class. Yellow-zoned parking tags mean that the student lives on campus, therefore they don't need to drive to class.Another point that didn't make sense to me was the fact that Ray said there are 7,000 parking spots available to the university. Although this interview was published exactly a year ago, the population of Murray State University greatly exceeds 7,000.
In 2013, Murray State released the total number of enrolled students at 11,166. Take in consideration that this number is from 2013, the interview took place in 2014, and now it is 2015. I'm no math major, but I know these numbers don't add up. There's more than 7,000 students looking for a parking spot on campus.
The difference between parking spaces and enrolled students is 3,166. Granted, this number includes online students who don't necessarily need a parking spot on campus, but it does NOT include faculty and staff. The student faculty ratio, as stated on the U.S. News and World Report, is 16:1. This means that for every 16 struggling students looking for a parking spot before class, there's 1 faculty member doing the same.
The expansion of Murray State is wonderful. It's hard not to love a university as beautiful and as kind as Murray State's, but expanding our buildings, dormitories, and classrooms mean half as much when students aren't able to attend because they're too busy still looking for a parking spot outside.
