Eryn Lee: One of the most pressing issues at Mercer is the lack of available parking for both students and faculty alike. However, students living On Campus aren’t the only ones affected by this problem. I spoke with Erin Moore, a student who commutes to class every day about her thoughts on Mercer’s parking problem.  

Erin Moore: Some general thoughts I have on Mercer’s parking is that while there are some locations for commuters, there’s not enough. And so with a lot of the class I have, there’s not a lot of spaces or options for commuter students. And then a lot of commuter students share parking with teachers which is generally not a problem but with the impact on commuter students, there isn’t enough space and you end up fighting for spots or parking in the middle of nowhere. Generally, I think they need more spots.

Freshman year it actually wasn’t as bad, but I’ve noticed that especially last semester it was horrible to trying to find parking in certain areas.  You’d be sitting there waiting a couple minutes hoping to find a spot—Sometimes I had to wait 30 minutes to find a spot. Typically, I didn’t have to wait as much my freshman year as I do now, even though I have classes around the same time as I did then.  

Another thought I just has is that when there’s events, they close a lot of commuter parking lots. I had to park sometimes in a field, I’ve even had to park in a dirt road sometime because there was nothing. I’ve been late to class, and it’s very sad because here you are paying to become a student and going to all these classes and yet at the same time you’re not able to park somewhere and get to class on time because of an event or parking issue.

Hopefully by the time I graduate something may have changed. I know it’s not a one-night fix but I hope they can learn from it and as Mercer continues to grow, so does their ability to have parking for everyone.