As many residents of Eastern University know, the parking lots are the battlefield where a driver’s true colors are revealed. Savagery is shown when two residents fight for one spot an equal distance between them. Uproar can be heard when not a spot can be seen in sight as one gets back from working late. With the new system in place, Eastern has officially begun the Parking Lottery and Zoning. The purpose was to remove overcrowding that tends to happen in residential parking zones. This past spring, students were emailed Parking Invitations for their desirable area to park depending on Zone Preferences. Parking passes were given based on seniority for each zone and certain students on campus were already pre-placed in zones as they are Chaplains or RAs.
After an interview with Tracy Dahn, the Service Stop Coordinator, I have come to discover more information on zoning. There are 509 parking spots for residential students across campus and they have sold the exact amount of parking spaces for each zone. In other words, if you cannot find a parking spot in your zone it means someone parked where they are not supposed to park. If this occurs, students are to call security and inform them so that they can do parking enforcement around the area. During that time the student should park in Upper McInnis lot.
There are students on campus that view this new zoning as a positive aspect Eastern has incorporated, and there are others who state that zoning makes parking their car more of a hassle. Students have become unhappy parking in the Kea Guffin lot because they must often move their cars across campus to McInnis when events are taking place on campus or when visitors take spots in their designated zones.
As students are still picking up their parking passes, it is hard to tell whether the zoning will be successful. A student using the zoning, senior Marc Hershey stated, “I think it’s too soon to tell. So far, I don’t think I’ve gotten a parking spot any more consistently than in other years. It’s new and we should all be patient as people fix the kinks that are occurring.” While we wait to see how the new system will turn out, we can only hope that students will accurately park in their designated areas, that students will pick up their passes on time and that security will enforce the rules on those who decide to be a nuisance.