University should reduce the price of parking to compensate for lack of parking spaces on campus
By Samuel Rose
Skiff Staff

Please, someone, a little bargain for our money!

TCU, a school that prides itself on preparing leaders for a changing world and boasts about its business school, needs to apply some good business practices in addressing its parking issues.

“We” are all appreciative of the upcoming improvements in school facilities that the new Rickel Building, William E. and Jean Jones Tucker Technology Center and the Steve and Sarah Smith Entrepreneur Hall promise. I say “we” quite facetiously as I am a senior graduating in May and I will get no use out of these buildings.

But right now I, and everyone else on campus, have to put up with the inconvenience of not being able to find parking spaces.

This nuisance is festered by the construction of these new facilities.

Since the beginning of the semester, I have watched in horror as parking spaces have vanished due to the putting up of new “No Parking” signs, especially along Bellaire Drive North.

From time to time, heavy equipment such as forklifts, have even been parked overnight in the Tom Brown-Pete Wright Residential Community parking lot. Of course there were no parking tickets attached to it the next morning. I checked!

Vehicles belonging to construction workers are stacked up against the sidewalks on both sides of campus where students used to park. The last straw was when the temporary buildings were erected on the parking lot facing the Rickel Building. The more I think about it, the more I realize that much of the gas in my tank is spent idly circling the parking lots and streets looking for a semi-legal place to park.

My solution is this. I will refuse to buy a new parking sticker until they reduce the price of parking. Why shouldn’t TCU, at least temporarily, reduce the price of parking? The reason is simple enough: The amount of available parking has decreased. Freshman enrollment is at an all-time high. Local businesses are complaining that students are blocking their businesses due to parking needs.

While this proposition is not the end-all, solve-all solution to the parking problem, it will at least give TCU students a better bargain for their money. In a sense this is owed to us.

The school has deliberately taken away parking spots. Our parking spaces are being used by any and everybody and we are stuck paying the same high price for a poorer and ever decreasing service.

It’s a good business practice, TCU; appease the customers when the quality of service is uncontrollably poor. And poor it is.

Hey, the customer is always right!

Samuel Rose is a senior social work major from the British West Indies Cayman Islands. He can be contacted at (s.j.rose@student.tcu.edu).

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