With the beginning of the fall semester comes loads of new students, who are starting fresh and making campus a little busier and more jam-packed.

To make matters worse, parking changed, and I find it nearly impossible on most days to find a spot within a reasonable distance of where I need to be.

After years of wondering why they never made most, if not all, of the parking in front of Stubbs and Brown student parking, they changed that last spring.

What a tease.

 Here we are a couple of months later and not only is most of it back to teacher parking, but they’ve also taken a good deal of other student parking away.

We’ve basically been pushed further out, which doesn’t make much sense to me.

 Here we are paying to go to school, paying for a parking decal, which will soon go up in price, and now we have to park even further away or suffer with a parking ticket.

Those have gotten more expensive too, by the way.

Most of what I do on campus is in Stubbs Hall. Unless I get here at the crack of dawn, which I don’t and won’t because I don’t have to, I end up lapping the lots in my car until I find something reasonably close.

Do I even need to mention that while I’m doing this, I’m staring at at least 10 empty faculty spots that will likely remain empty all day? It’s really frustrating.

I’m not meaning to sound lazy, but I’d rather not have to park in the parking garage or the gravel lots when my classes are on the complete other side of campus.

I shouldn’t have to pay for a $50 parking decal to hike to class everyday. 

Take a drive around campus at any time of day Monday through Friday and you’ll see how many of the faculty parking spaces are left unused while all of the student spaces are taken.

And that’s with some students risking a parking ticket by parking in restricted spaces.

While I’m driving around looking for a place to park, those faculty spaces are the most tempting. They are right where I need to be, and I know how likely it is that if I don’t park there, it’ll still be empty later. It’s almost as if they want us to get tickets.

Let’s just go ahead and warn our teachers we’ll be late because we are either circling the lots trying to find a reasonable place to park or walking a mile to get to class.