To the Editor:
I will not disagree that the parking here at USM needs some form of attention. However, the article in your paper implies that the only way to fix it is to build a parking garage, which leads to raising the price for parking. This is unnecessary and very expensive, especially for most college students.
If we could just organize the parking lots in Portland a little better, this would not be such a big problem. I go to Portland for class every Monday and Wednesday, at the worst time to try to find a place to park. However, the biggest problem is not that there are not enough parking spots, it’s the fact that everything is so disorganized. Many people at this time finally give up and park in any spot they can find, blocking off some of the parking lot, therefore making less room for the many cars that need a place to park.
I know the easiest thing to do would be to build a parking garage. However, it also hurts the students in many ways: Many students will not be able to afford the parking fees, thus forcing them to leave their cars at home. This will discourage these students from taking Portland classes. Also, the students that can afford to pay extra, in my experience, are very few, so building a huge parking garage for just these students almost seems pointless.
Therefore, building a parking garage can and will end the bad situation of parking at USM, but it is not the smartest or easiest way of handling it. You can see that it’s not the easiest way just by the controversy that has already started because of it, which will only get worse if you try to make the students pay that much, even before the parking garage is built.
You can also see that it’s not the smartest because if you raise the parking fees that much, it will take care of the problem in itself, because many students will just not bring their cars to school, giving you a brand new parking garage but not many cars to put in it.
There are much better ways of going about the parking problem at USM. We shouldn’t just base this decision on how easy the solution looks, because we are only going to have a mess in the end.
Pamela Loveless
Resident student
EDITOR’S CLARIFICATION: The new parking fees proposed by the University administration will NOT be optional for any student.
As opposed to the current system that gives students the option to buy a parking sticker each year, next year all students will pay the fees based on the number of credit hours they are taking.
Students will pay $4 per credit hour, or $96 next year for both semesters for a student taking 12 credit hours each semester. The following year, the fees will double, totaling $192 for two 12 credit hour semesters. The current fee is $35 for the year.