by Alejandro Bastidas
The main building at SCAD lacks efficiency when it comes to parking spots, as it has insufficient spaces and forces students to go higher up the floors and waste more time in a task that should be simple and quick. “The first three floors are mostly full between 11 a.m.-5 p.m., as students are going back and forth between classes and the transit is constant throughout that period,” said Antony Forcellini, a second-year motion media student.
Andrés Chaves, a third-year film and television student said, “When I have to park on the upper floors, which is in most cases, it takes me a while to get to class because the wait for the elevators is really long and it would be even worse to walk all the way down. It also doesn’t help when some cars are parked between two spots and make others keep going up.”
With the opening of the new residence hall, FORTY, more students have been attracted to SCAD and despite being on campus, they still have cars and need safe, convenient parking. It would make sense that for such a humongous and modern building as FORTY, there would be a designated parking lot for the students on the premises – but there isn’t.
Nathan Alfie, a second-year industrial design student reports that students are instructed to park on the lowest level of the main building and not everyone does it, as FORTY’s close location to SCAD allows students to get to the best parking lots first on other levels. It would be a great relief for drivers if SCAD decided to utilize the ruins of the torn down Spring House as a parking lot for the new building or even to expand the parking possibilities for students.
Another pressing issue is the parking at Ivy Hall, another academic building at SCAD for the writing courses. Shuttle driver Cris, claims that when she picks up or drops off students at Ivy Hall, she always sees the struggle drivers face when entering or exiting the building as the entryway is extremely narrow and there is a long line of cars waiting on the side for people to exit because there are no more spaces inside Ivy Hall.
SCAD is trying to regulate the situation with the parking spots and solve some minor issues now. A report from SCAD Message System sent on Sept. 19 said there will be parking citations applied to those drivers who do not have the required decals, to prevent unauthorized vehicles from taking up the spaces. Double parking and parking on yellow lines will also be sanctioned, so, hopefully students will be more conscious of their parking habits and there will be more spaces available for everyone.