Having a car on campus is a privilege. Yes, I know that and I am very thankful to Bryn Mawr and my family for allowing me to have this privilege and I don’t mean to be rude, but WE NEED MORE STUDENT PARKING! The rules right now for parking on campus are as follows (generalized), you must have a permit ($50 dollars for 1 semester, or $100 for the year), you can only park in student parking spots. I know what you may be thinking, “what’s wrong about that?” Nothing is wrong with that, except for the only places students can park is in the lower level parking lot of Erdman, which holds maybe 20 spots, a small section by admissions (10 spots), and of course in front of New Dorm/across from Pem Arch, but that is a huge gamble and half the time there are no spots, or a spot is too small

My car Olly parked in front of New Dorm. I was lucky enough to find a spot!

for you to park. But don’t worry, overflow parking is all the way across campus by the gym.

I know that really isn’t too bad in retrospect, but when you’re coming back to campus after a late class or a club event you really just want to park as close to your dorm as you can. And let’s be clear the closest dorm to the athletics lot is Brecon* so… And when you look across the street to see Shipley’s really big parking garage, it makes us students mad sometimes. Often times when I leave my parking spot, I tell whoever I am driving with to “say a prayer for a spot now.” That’s how bad it is. We pray when we LEAVE for a spot when we get back. I even remember telling my mom the other day that I don’t want to leave because I don’t want to lose my parking spot, which completely negates the whole having a car on campus thing.

Many visitors to campus and even some faculty sometimes park in student parking. When there is so few student parking spots on the main part of campus, every spot is precious and when a non-student takes the spot, it causes some major frustration from students. The other day, one of my friends wrote on Facebook how she had a really difficult time finding a parking spot the other day because the spots were taken by non-students. Other Bryn Mawr students also commented how this has been happening to them, and that they had even seen some students from Villanova parking in our spots, and that they had to find parking elsewhere and got a ticket from Campus Safety. I really hope that parking on campus can become more beneficial and less stressful for students, maybe a plenary resolution??

*Brecon is technically in another township.