It's a bit more than a half mile to my assigned parking space. Yeah sure that's not very far, but consider that my last class will end at 2:15 and then I have to walk a half mile from that class to my dorm to get my laundry and anything else I want to take home for the weekend, then carry that stuff a half mile from my dorm to my car when I have to be to work by 3. It's not for lack of parking spaces. There's about 10 parking spaces immediately outside of Squire, and right across the street there's a whole parking lot that can hold around 50 cars and is never full. Ever. But those are gold pass lots, for people who commute to campus every day. Not for students who are paying through their teeth to not only go to UD but to live in the UD dorms and suffer the UD dining plan. Not for the students who have to have a car on campus to get to and from work two or three nights a week to pay for car insurance and textbooks, neither of which are covered by student loans or grants.
One way transit time between my dorm and work is right around 45 minutes, provided I don't stop and do anything else at all, like change into or out of a work shirt and round up my dirty laundry or assorted possessions. Traffic pending, which has gotten worse this semester. So, Monday mornings I wake up and put on a work shirt and pack up my laptop and its power cord and my notebooks and go to class. When classes are over I go straight to my car and make it to work at about 3, traffic pending. After work I usually go to Justin's house right down the road to hang out with him for an hour or so before I get back to campus. Then on Friday mornings I round up my laundry and anything I want to take home for the weekend and leave it infront of my closet so that when I get done with my classes I can hurry to my car, drive it back to my dorm, run in and grab my stuff and run back out hoping to get in and out before public safety notices my car in the fire lane and gives me a ticket. I'm usually a few minutes late to work on Fridays because the trip to my dorm adds at least 10 minutes.
On top of having to park in Never never land, I pay through the teeth to do it. A resident student parking pass for just one semester costs about $250. As many times as I've begged, they won't let me tack that into my student bill, so I have to factor that in to the amount I put away for textbooks/beginning of semester BS. Resident student lots are all pretty far away from the dorms and classrooms, and there's no bus running between them. I am allowed to park on South Campus, where there are buses running back and forth, but the buses can't be counted on, and they generally aren't running when I get back to campus at night. Also, waiting for the bus would take as much time as walking to my current lot. Even considering the headache with the buses, I'd be willing to ride them if I were allowed to buy the red parking pass, which is the lowest tier, making it the cheapest. Red pass users can only park on South Campus. And accordingly, a red pass only costs about $100 per semester. But I'm a resident student, so the lowest tier pass I'm allowed to buy is the green resident pass. I can always buy the better ones, $350 and up a semester, to park in almost any lot.
To top it all off, the last time I was in the parking services building, I overheard the lady at the desk talking about how Patrick Harker (UD President) is trying to move the school towards being more dependent on the buses. He wants everyone to park on South Campus or in the parking lot they're making where the Chrysler building currently is, and then ride the bus up to the Green and walk wherever they need to go from there. Now, I've got nothing against walking when I've got time, but being a college student means time is my most valuable resource. When I heard this, the girl in line ahead of me (we'd been making snarky remarks about the parking system the whole time. She had a ticket, I was getting a guest pass so that Justin could park in never never land while he visited me) said "Wow. If you find a way to have that kind of time, you let me know. I barely have time to eat breakfast in the morning." My response was "Well, if we cut sleeping out altogether, we can add about 6 hours to the day. That'll give us time to walk wherever we have to go on campus."
Summary: I have no time for these shenanigans! >:O
See, that is completely and utterly ridiculous. You live in the dorms and pay and arm and a leg to live there. I see no reason why specialized parking between classes and dorms can't be arranged. But I imagine that UD is bigger than most campuses I've visited.
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