Even though William Peace University’s public safety says that parking is no different this semester at Peace than in previous semesters, students beg to differ. It seems that parking lots are overcrowded and parking is harder to find for students.
Peace students have a hard time getting to their classes on time due to not being able to find parking, especially for those who have classes that start after 10 a.m. Whereas in the past semesters, students could find a few empty parking spots- that is not the case this semester. In order to be guaranteed a parking spot, students usually have to arrive before 10 a.m.
“I get to campus around 9:45am and I usually don’t have a hard time finding parking, but there’s only like 8 spots left,” said senior Shelby Lombardo.
The main parking lot is always crowded until later in the evening. When students who are driving to campus have class, they try to arrive 30 minutes earlier than their class starts. Doing so they can keep circling around parking lots and streets to be sure they will not show up late for class.
Peace students are able to use Seaboard Station’s parking lot, but there is a two-hour parking time limit. There is not much time to try to find parking somewhere else once their time limit is up between classes.
Some students are aggravated that they pay over $200 for a parking decal and are still not able to find parking spots available on campus. This leads students having to park on the side of the street or somewhere else off-campus.
Occasionally, students will park in non-parking spots just to make it to class on time. Some of them also take the R-Line to avoid buying a parking decal and trying to find places to park once on campus.
Between 10a.m. and 1p.m. students tend to not leave campus since this is the main class times. Students may be out of luck who are trying to park between these hours. If wanting to make it to class on time, try getting to campus 30 minutes early and prepare to have to keep circling around to wait for a parking spot to open.
While some students have classes spread out throughout the day, they feel that they cannot leave campus for a lunch break or go anywhere because they do not want to have to try to find parking all over again. They would rather just stay on campus for the majority of their class day.
One student even stated that the road construction that is going on around campus is not as bad to get through as just trying to find parking. Public safety stated in an email that parking has not changed from this semester to previous semesters and additional parking can be found in the back of Peace (Peace Beach) if the main parking lot is full.