Hunter Huckabay
Contributing Writer
Throughout this semester, one thing that has become clear once again is that there are not enough parking spaces for everyone. Sewanee is home to about 1,735 undergraduates students, 99% of whom live on campus. Due to the fact that the university is in a rather remote location and does not offer any form of public transportation, students need a car if they need to do anything that is off campus. This includes doing things such as buying bare necessities. However, the university is ill-equipped to handle the amount of students bringing cars on campus.
The locations where students can park are split into 11 zones and determined by residence halls. Students can park in the parking lots in the zone that their dorm is located in at any time. No-parking areas on campus are time-limited lots, customer parking, visitor and employee parking.
However, not all parking zones are created equal, and some students are left to scramble for a spot day after day. Ellie Daniels (C ‘27), a resident of Johnson Hall, expressed her frustration over never having a place to park. “There are probably less than 20 spots at Johnson, which in my opinion is really dangerous because people park on the side which makes it hard to back out or drive into the lot,” she said.
With some dorms having such limited parking spots, students are forced to park in lots much farther from their dorm. Rebecca Liles (C ‘27) says that she often has to park far away from her dorm as she often works late at the Tennessee Williams Center. Liles, amongst many other students, is uncomfortable with having to walk a long distance to her dorm at night.
When a student is issued a parking ticket by the Sewanee Police Department, they are ordered to pay a fine. Depending on the offense, these fines can cost $50 to $100. Many students feel that the SPD can be very strict on issuing tickets. Daniels was once issued a parking ticket for being parked in a legal spot that they had to paint. Daniels, however, was unaware that the spot was being painted, and the only warning she was given was a call at 6:30 a.m. that she was not able to answer because she was asleep. This strict issuing of tickets is frustrating for many students as they are forced to pay fines for parking violations that they were often not even aware of.
One solution that may fix the problem is taking some of the parking spots allocated to faculty or visitors and giving some of them to students. Many faculty and visitor parking lots, such as the one behind Dupont library, are never completely full. Some of these spots could be designated as student parking, allowing commuters or those who live in dorms far from central campus to park there during the day. This would be beneficial, as those who decide to live off campus are only allowed to park in the lot next to the Tennessee Williams Center, which is not close to any academic buildings on central campus.
The Library parking lot is full every weekday from 7:30am-4pm. Staff often can’t find spots, and many of the spots in that parking lot have been reserved for visitors and SVFD already. I think a better solution would to put in an entirely new parking lot for students.
13,000 acre campus and we can’t find parking for 1750 students. And Covid killed the campus shuttle. It is an infrastructure problem, but not an especially complicated one.