Ole Miss JOUR 102: The Student Disability Service Feels Pressure

Driving and Parking on Campus: A Task in Itself

A student wakes up a few minutes late for a 10 o’clock class and immediately gets dressed and is out the door by 9:40, thinking that he will make it to class on time. He gets to campus at 9:45, only to find that there are no parking spots anywhere close to campus. After ten minutes of driving around looking for a spot, he is forced to park far away down Old Taylor Road, causing him to be late to class.

For many students, this painful task happens all too often when on the campus. With the enrollment of Ole Miss at an all-time high, traffic coming in and out of campus is more hectic than it has ever been. In fact, the main four way stop on campus is so busy that traffic guards are required for most of the day for traffic to move somewhat smoothly and for students walking to get through the crosswalks safely.

The biggest issue by far is parking on campus, which students find quite difficult given the amount of people trying to park. According to the September 15^th edition of “The Daily Mississippian”, University Parking Services sold 14, 590 parking decals, when in fact there are only 12, 622 spots available for parking.

This overselling of spots has caused quite an amount of confusion and frustration for students, including sophomore transfer student Reed Kerwin. “I absolutely love Ole Miss, but if there was one thing I could complain about the school, it would be the traffic and parking. It’s so annoying to come to campus and have almost no spots available, especially during the busiest times of day such as my 11 AM class. It’s frustrating because if I don’t come early enough, it will put me behind at least five minutes, and I’ve been late to a few classes because of it.”

Junior Alden Treadway has complained about the on-campus traffic during class time. “Normally it takes me five minutes at most to get to campus from my house on South 18^th, but during class times I don’t even like driving onto the actual campus because I know it will add an extra ten minutes to my drive. Something has to be done.” Treadway lives off-campus and commutes daily to classes, saying that she deals with these problems almost everyday.

Students have voiced their frustrations to University Parking Services, but so far nothing really has been done to improve the traffic or parking issues. With Ole Miss’ student population growing rapidly, new options for parking must be made available in order to accommodate the growing number of students. The pace of traffic on-campus must be dealt with as well so students can get on and off campus quickly to keep traffic flowing. If something is not done, then these problems we face now will only get worse.