By ASHLEY BANKS

Staff Writer 

One thing that I have heard complaints about most often on this campus has been over a “lack” of parking. This is something that I have never been able to understand in my six months of being at Piedmont.

To put it simply, parking is not an issue here. There are plenty of parking spaces near the dorms, and the majority of the time there are always empty spots available. To have even one open parking spot in a lot that was a 10 minute walk just to get to the edge of campus would be a dream come true at most schools.

I’ve noticed that Piedmont students complain if they have to five minutes to get somewhere on campus. This school is tiny. 

Even if you live in the dorms, it is maybe a 10 minute walk to get to campus. That is not bad at all, especially when you compare it to much larger schools. Students at large state schools can only dream of having the ratio of students to parking spaces that Piedmont does. If you consistently have a place to park your car, you should consider yourself lucky. 

At large state schools, students have to arrive at school by 9:30 a.m. at the latest to even hope to find a decent parking spot, because if you get there any later all of the good spots will be taken. At a large school you count your blessings if you are able to find a parking spot after spending 30 minutes driving in circles around a parking deck, waiting for one to open up. Students at state schools witness daily a line of anxious drivers line up behind them waiting to get their spot when their are just going to drop off something in their car. 

They have to park in a parking lot that isn’t even on campus, and ride a shuttle to the school. After going through all of that just to simply find a place to park, they then have to walk to class. 

The length of the walk to class is at least double the size of Piedmont’s main campus area, if not more. But those students are thankful that they only have to walk that far because they were at least able to find a parking space, even if it was far away.

Sometimes it is still hard for me to get used to the fact that I go to a school that doesn’t have a single parking deck. 

One of the reasons I first liked it here was because parking on campus wasn’t a struggle. Parking is easy and always available.