Parking and priorities

As the Indiana Daily Student reported June 22, among other motor vehicle and campus congestion nuisances, President Herbert's Parking Commission is chitchatting about the "appropriateness" of selling A and C parking permits to students. IU Student Body Vice President Andrew Lauck has said that our elected-student body representatives will "disagree with any initiative that would take away permit access to students who need them for their contributions to the University."\nWe, however, do not concur with our student body representative. If more students had access to campus parking, as he has proposed, congestion would increase in an already congested campus community. \nThe University currently dishes out about two A passes for every one A parking space, resulting in professors having to get to school at 6 a.m. to secure a spot near the building they teach in -- and faculty who commute from Indianapolis to Bloomington are left with nowhere to park, because they cannot get here any earlier. How is IU supposed to recruit and retain top quality teachers, then, if students continue to swallow a significant amount of parking spaces? \nWe do not think students are "entitled" to park on campus -- especially considering that few students chose to attend IU, or any school for that matter, based on the availability and convenience of on-campus parking. Instead, they are more influenced by the tree-lined scenery and the rustic coziness of the campus -- which we would need to bulldoze to pave more parking space. As is, the near 200-year-old campus infrastructure cannot support many more additions and renovations of concrete-paved parking spaces. \nBut most importantly, just when we, the students, might have thought there was nothing we could do to slow the rate of global climate change, the IU administration has provided an opportunity to learn about the imminent dangers of fossil fuel emissions and alternative forms of human transportation. For many students, four years of college is a transition period into the "real" world -- a time for life lessons, when students plan on how best they can contribute to society. Why should this education not include sustainable living? We encourage every IU student and faculty member to consider walking, jogging, bicycling, skateboarding, driving a moped or riding the buses to school everyday. IU buses are free, as are Bloomington Transit buses with a student ID -- and Indiana 9th District Representative Mike Sodrel has earmarked $750,000 to upgrade the Bloomington Transit bus fleet. Why not take advantage of this service? Additionally, we propose the University consider making the student parking at the IU Memorial Stadium free to all to encourage more parking there, and we applaud the University's consideration to do away with the $5 bicycle parking fee to encourage alternative forms of transportation to campus.\nThe solution is not more access, more choices and bigger parking facilities. The solution lies in all of us to burn our human fuel, in the form of calories, rather than fossil fuels -- and to place the future of our collective environment over individual convenience.