Profs: Ban students from A,C lots

Some professors think a lack of parking spots is adversely affecting their job performances. So a faculty plan, were it ever enacted, would discontinue the sale of A and C parking permits to most students.\nFrustrations among the faculty mounted as the parking problem took the floor at a Bloomington Faculty Council meeting Tuesday. \nThe BFC approved the parking recommendation designed to amend the space problems among the A and C parking spaces that faculty and staff largely use. The vote was not unanimous.\nCurrently, the ratio of parking permits issued to spaces was 2.6:1 for A permits, and 1.7:1 for C permits, according to a report. That ratio compares unfavorably with other major universities that only sell 10 or 20 percent more permits than spaces allotted. \n"Parking here is worse than on many other large campuses," BFC Agenda Committee member Craig Bradley said.\nThe proposal itself is based on recommendations a Parking Study Committee appointed in 2003 by then-Chancellor Sharon Brehm made. The committee \npresented five suggestions to amend the parking problems to the BFC last year. Since then, only two of the five recommendations have been put into action. \nThe Universal Transportation Fee, making all on-site bus rides free to students, came from the recommendations, as well as the construction of a new parking garage to be built on Fess Street.\nConstruction for this new garage is speculated to begin in May, Bradley said. \nAmong the newly approved recommendations is the restriction of the sale of A and C parking permits to faculty and staff only, including graduate students who teach regularly scheduled classes of undergraduates. The Parking Study Committee found that last year 734 and 1,041 non-teaching students were allowed to purchase A and C permits, respectively.\nBradley said selling permits to students who are not associate instructors was a mistake.\n"What the University does to make parking worse is sell spaces to private individuals for their own personal use," he said. "Some of whom aren't even associated with the University so (the spaces) are empty half the time."\nAlso proposed was the restriction of the Atwater, Jordan and Poplars parking garages to house A permit spaces only, something not all parties present agreed with. \nBFC member Bill Wheeler said he worries what will happen to many of the students who currently have parking spaces in the Atwater parking garage.\n"I personally feel a great deal of empathy for the students who have spaces in the Atwater garage," he said. \nCurrently students are eligible to enter a lottery drawing for some spaces in the Atwater garage. \nWheeler was the first faculty member to share concerns for students' needs during the meeting, some 15 minutes into the discussion.\nIU Student Association President Alex Shortle also questioned where students with Atwater permits would park if the spaces were eliminated, especially those students living in the greek houses in the Atwater area. \n"They would park at the football stadium and ride the buses or ride their bikes ... Whatever," Bradley said. \nClint Oster, chairman of the Parking Study Committee, did not provide even a glimmer of hope for students looking to continue to park in A or C lots or garages.\n"People are being terribly inconvenienced," he said. "Students will be inconvenienced more, faculty and staff, a little less." \nThe third approval is to restrict R spaces for service and delivery vehicles only, creating a need for fewer of them and opening up more spaces to become faculty and staff parking. Exempt from this recommendation is the reserved lot next to Bryan Hall. The motion recommends all other reserved lots to be turned into A spaces. \nThe BFC Agenda Committee hopes to have the new parking recommendations in full consideration for the fall semester, fearing that the closing of the Fess parking lot will constrict faculty and staff parking even further. But BFC President Ted Miller said the proposal is only a recommendation.\n"Clearly, the BFC has no authority over parking services," he said.