Ohio Wesleyan University Public Safety plans to change the parking system for the 2023-24 school year following complaints regarding campus parking. These changes will bring more parking accommodations for students and improve parking visibility.
Parking has been a hot topic on campus for the past few years. The number of students has increased over time while the number of parking spaces have remained the same. This leads to too many cars and not enough spaces to park. People have also had conflicts with the number of student-specific parking spaces on campus.
The new plan will change parking spaces into zones instead of letters.
“This will help control the distribution of demand and supply of parking spaces on campus.,” said Sean Bolender, public safety officer.
Parking signage will also be more visible and standardized. Public safety plans to make one of the lots for commuters only to help commuters plan where to park while on campus.
This year the biggest problem has been parking in the Smith parking lot where freshmen live.
This year’s 500 new freshmen led to a parking shortage in the Smith parking lot. This conflicts with residents of Hayes, an upperclassmen dorm, who share the parking lot with freshmen.
Public safety plans to move first-year parking to other lots within a 10-minute walk of Smith Hall to address the parking shortage issue. This will give upperclassmen a better chance of parking in the Smith lot.
Public safety explored many different options before coming to their current decision regarding parking. It would not be fair to do a parking pass lottery and it also wouldn’t be fair to ban freshmen from having cars.
Currently, parking lots are divided into letter spaces ranging from A-D. Parking passes are available for students to purchase for $175 for spaces B and C with B spaces only available to sophomores and up. A spaces are reserved for staff and D spaces are free for any student to buy.
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