Photo Submitted by Marissa Stubs
Every year the students at Florida A&M University complain about the lack of parking spaces on campus. With the student body growing, available parking is becoming extremely limited. However, FAMU’s parking services are addressing these complaints one lot at a time.
The requests for more parking lots comes up every year. FAMU’s parking services says it is working to meet every need for both students and staff.
Two new parking lots were opened on Monday. One parking lot is located on the corner of MLK Boulevard and Osceola Street, which holds 50 vehicles. The other parking lot is at Ardelia Court, which holds 250 vehicles.
Students were excited to see the new lots open and ready for use.
“It’s about time we received more available parking. I always have troubles finding parking on my way to class, so these new parking lots will benefit us students and the staff,” Shunteri Anderson, a junior criminal justice major, said.
FAMU Parking services and Student Government Affairs teamed up to have these parking lots open and available at the earliest dates for the 2019-2020 academic school year.
Terrance Calloway, who is the chief of FAMU police, said Parking Services worked quickly to ensure students had available parking.
“When they took some of the parking away in order to build housing facilities, we tried to utilize areas to open parking services for students,” Calloway said.
Many students feel that there is more employee parking than general parking. Many students receive tickets or walk out and see their cars booted because they were oblivious to the parking rules.
“I received a $30 ticket the first week of school because I was parked in an employee parking lot, when I thought it was available for students,” Autumn Walton, a junior pre-social work major, said.
The two new parking lots will help alleviate the stress students have about parking in the wrong spots.
However, students aren’t the only ones complaining about the lack of parking spaces. Some faculty and staff also feel that their parking resources are limited. Many professors have said they have to arrive early in order to get a parking space.
Opening the two new parking lots will benefit students but many are asking: Is it enough?