There is no one exempt from it this semester: the fruitless searching, waiting and looking for that elusive parking spot. Even teachers who have their own parking lot are being forced to drive in circles looking for a place to park, while in some instances whole classes sit waiting for them to park so class can start.
This year Amarillo College decided to stop requiring parking permits and allow students to park wherever they want - with the exception of the employee lot, visitor parking and fire lanes. But the problem is that even without having to keep up with that little thing that hangs from your rearview mirror, it is no easier finding somewhere to park.
There are snaking lines of cars in all the parking lots, cars lining all the streets and people walking all over the place. It's bad enough when you already are late for class, but you also have to get to campus at 7 in the morning to find a place to park by the time your 9 o'clock class starts. And there are the people who have motorcycles and take up a spot, giving you a false sense of hope that there might be a parking spot while you follow all the other people stalking a spot to park.
No, on top of everything else, every spot that feasibly can be turned into a place to park is guaranteed to get you a ticket or have your car towed away.
Where there aren't cars, there are people going back to their cars talking on their phones, talking to their friends, not paying attention walking in the middle of the road - even though there is a perfectly good bridge spanning the street to keep pedestrians out of the way.
Every year at every college all over the country, whether it's the smallest junior college or the most prestigious Ivy League school, there never is enough parking. Everyone thinks they have the solution to the parking problem. AC is no different; every person thinks he or she has the "perfect" solution to the lack of parking.
But every time it is suggested that they pave over the park south of the campus, students are informed that the area does not belong to AC, so that can't be a parking lot.
Or how many times has someone complained that the new biology building being built has taken away even more of the ever-rare parking spots?
One of the opinions that students throw around is that the college could have built the biology building on another campus and used that space for a parking garage. But quite frankly, low tuition is one of the things that makes AC so appealing, and school officials say a parking garage would be too expensive. We don't want tuition raised to build a parking garage.
The "perfect" solution would be for AC to buy the Albertson's parking lot at I-40 and Washington. People could park there and have a shuttle to drive them up to the bridge so they could get to class. But there probably is a good reason why that isn't an option, either.
The problem isn't just the parking. There are so many more people this semester than this time last year. The registrar's office is estimating a 10.9 percent increase in enrollment. Added to construction, that means a 25 percent decrease in parking.
Added to that, the skyrocketing price of parking tickets will make anyone wary of making their own parking space. Doing away with parking permits really didn't do any good except that AC might be a little more eco-friendly by not creating the permits.
But with all the cars idling in the parking lots, waiting for people walking out of class so we can steal their spot, any eco-friendly advantage seems to be outweighed by those idling cars.
See Also: StudentSpeak: "What do you think about the new parking situation?"
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