By: Anaya Parker
Student complaints about parking at Southern Adventist University have been an issue for decades. While current students may perceive this as a recent problem, the Southern Accent has been reporting on parking problems since 1980.
The Accent went through all articles written about parking at Southern since the newspaper’s first issue. The first mention of parking issues was in a letter to the editor titled “Cramped Parking Problems Plague Students,” published on Jan. 31, 1980.
“With a fall 1979 enrollment of over 2,000 students, we must realize the need for improved and added parking facilities,” wrote student Johnny Lazor, “and not only realize it, but do something about it!”
The problem persisted, and students were also frustrated with Campus Safety. In 1988, ticketing began on registration day, and over 200 tickets were written by Sept. 1, according to the Accent. Issue 1 in Volume 44 of the newspaper reported that student Tim Prusia parked in Talge’s front lot and received two tickets in one day and a third after moving to the back lot and parking in a dean’s spot. The third ticket was later dismissed because the sign indicating the dean’s spot was not easily visible.
“Where else was I supposed to park?” Prusia said. “It’s like a money-making scheme.”
On Feb. 15, 1991, Southern implemented a new parking policy and lowered the fine from $5 to $3 for the first ticket, $5 for the second, $10 for the third and $15 for the fourth. Once a student received a fourth ticket, Campus Safety could boot their vehicle.
Southern Villagers also struggled with parking back in the ’90s as much as they do today. On Sept. 23, 1994, the Accent published an article titled “Villagers Vent Parking Woes.”
Village residents Alyssa McCurdy and Nola Bidwell wrote, “True, we could leave an hour earlier from our homes to find a parking space, but do dorm students have to leave an hour earlier to find a parking space? No, because they take ours.”
In an Accent article titled “Ten Ways You Know You’re At Southern” that was published Sept. 5, 1997, the second point written said, “You park – just for a second – in front of Talge/Thatcher parking lot, and the second your feet hit the pavement, campus safety is there to impound your car!”
In Oct. 2001, the Accent reported that Southern had 1,565 parking spaces but 2,235 registered vehicles. Faculty parking was the worst, with 174 dedicated spaces for the 651 registered faculty vehicles.
In September of 2002, the Accent reported that, in an attempt to ease the strain on parking, Southern spent $5,000 re-striping the lower Lynn Wood and Iles parking lots to create 22 more parking spaces.
On Dec. 10, 2002, the Accent reported that Gorden Bietz, then president of Southern, was planning to build a three-level parking garage. According to the Accent, this garage would be located between the Collegedale Seventh-day Adventist Church and Iles P.E. Center.
On Oct. 26, 2006, the Accent reported that $11,905 had been collected in tickets for a total of 513 vehicle violations.
According to the Accent, in Sept. 2015, Campus Safety took a new approach to parking permits. The university offered free parking permits for community students in less populated areas. The stickers had an O instead of a C and provided parking at farther locations, such as the church parking lot and Morningside Drive near the Biology Trail.
Recent articles concerning parking mention student complaints over the inequality of parking struggles for commuter students versus on-campus students. The continual issue is made worse by the growth of Southern. Parking on Southern’s campus has changed over the years, but the issue has yet to be solved to the satisfaction of students since they first began bringing cars to campus. The most recent Accent article on the topic, published on Nov. 12, 2024, details similar parking concerns and administration’s goals to create more parking lots around campus.
