Ben Lepper ‘25
Editor-In-Chief
If you’re a Holy Cross student with a car on campus, you know the plight all too well. I’ll cut directly to the chase: the parking situation on this campus is absolutely atrocious right now.
It is becoming more and more of a trend for Holy Cross students to bring their cars to campus. I’m not quite sure how a lot of college students are able to have one considering the fact that cars aren’t the cheapest things in the world to buy and maintain, but I digress (and, besides, I have one to my name on campus).
A car is undoubtedly a luxury to have here, and while the parking passes come at a premium, they open up a whole new world of possibilities for the average student. Specifically, for me, having a car on campus has made it infinitely easier to make essential shopping trips. I live in an apartment-style room in Williams Hall, and we have a full kitchen, as well as limited access to Kimball. Grocery shopping is a necessity. It’s also very easy to run to Target whenever we run out of a necessity like soap, dishwasher pods, or paper towels.
Having a car also saves the average student a ton of money on Ubers. Want to go to dinner with your friends? Want to go bowling? Want to head to the movies? You don’t have to spend $15 on an Uber or rely on the sporadic shuttle schedule anymore. And, while I am aware that not everyone is in a situation where they can afford a car, I think it’s pretty reasonable to claim that everyone is at least one degree of separation from someone who has one. I have never been denied a ride by somebody; the average car-owning student here, in my experience, is more than happy to provide assistance to anybody who needs to get somewhere.
So, we’ve talked about why having a car on campus is becoming more and more popular every year. Now, let’s get to the issue at hand: parking.
I am well aware that parking in general is an issue across campus. There is just not enough space for people to park their cars in general. But, for visitors, they can park anywhere they want to without fear of a parking ticket. If you’re a student, and you’re caught parking in non-student parking, that’s a ticket.
Now, that begs the question; why won’t students just follow the rules and park in student parking? Simple: there is not enough student parking on this campus. Period.
Students are allowed to park in only a few lots around campus; a strip of land behind the Prior Performing Arts Center, a handful of small lots outside the Hart Center, a small portion of the hill behind Williams, and on levels 1 and 2 of the parking garage. Those spots all go extremely quickly. If you get back late one night, you run into the very-real possibility of no spots being open. It gets even worse if there are visitors to the College who park in student parking. In that case, you’re screwed through no fault of your own.
What’s even worse is that, this semester, a good chunk of the student parking in the garage has been replaced by Holy Cross vans. To the students’ knowledge, there was no new student parking designated. And, even worse, every time there is even “light snow,” students have to evacuate the upper lots, presumably to move to the student parking in the garage. What student parking in the garage? The student parking being taken up by vans now?
I’m not quite sure what’s going on here. Is the school just greatly underestimating the amount of students bringing cars to campus these days? They have to be aware of just how many parking passes are sold a year; surely they can coordinate the amount of student parking spaces to the amount of passes sold, or coordinate the amount of parking passes available to the amount of spaces that exist for students.
As I mentioned earlier, I know that students aren’t the only ones here dealing with limited parking. Professors have to park. Visitors have to park. Everyone who works at this campus has to park. But, as a Holy Cross student, waking up to a garish orange “VIOLATION” sticker just because all of our designated spots were taken is becoming more and more of an inevitable reality. Perhaps some of the other lots on campus could be opened up to students during a specific time period after professors and faculty have left; say, from 6 PM to 7 AM.
Is this a first world problem? Entirely. Are there bigger problems on this campus to deal with? Of course. But this seems like the kind of issue that, compared to some of the larger issues on campus, is relatively easy to solve — even I came up with a potential solution. And that brings up one final question I’d like to provide as some food for thought: if we can’t even figure out parking, then how are we supposed to fix any of the more glaring problems that exist here?
Copy Edited by Lilly Baumfeld ’28
Featured image courtesy of College of the Holy Cross
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