With a growing student body comes new challenges. Piedmont has worked to create a balance between the increasing student population and the small school, small-town environment. The construction of the Commons, the Village, and the updates to the music building are all representative of the college’s growth. However, amidst all these changes, Piedmont has failed to fix the one thing that students complain about more than any on-campus issue: parking. There isn’t enough space for every student to park as they have in the past.
Piedmont’s introduction of several new “red lots” across campus at the beginning of the 2018-19 school year, without clear signage or notification to students, left many students with parking tickets that they deemed unfair.
The freshmen girls of Getman-Babcock Residence Hall (GB) have taken the brunt of these parking changes. The lots surrounding their building have been turned into red lots, and the girls have been instructed to park in Lot X, an unlit, small and poorly marked parking lot at the bottom of a steep hill, far from the dormitory.
“I don’t think that the parking at GB is adequate for the girls living there, and I don’t believe that the girls feel safe when walking through the GB parking lot,” freshman senator and music education major Lauren “Lern” Passmore says. “I do hope that the administration takes the concerns of our girls seriously. I believe everyone should have the right to feel safe on campus.”
“There’s definitely not enough parking,” says student Misbah Ahmad. “I certainly don’t feel safe walking to the parking lot across from the bridge by myself at night.”
Lighting isn’t the only concern Piedmont students have about safety in on-campus parking lots. At a recent SGA open forum, students talked about how unsafe they believe the parking lot outside the Commons is. Students voiced concern about cars flying through the lot and not abiding by street signs, regardless of pedestrians and the many students parking and leaving parking spots.
Though Piedmont has a small campus compared to many other colleges and universities, students believe driving on campus isn’t something that can be avoided.
“This is a campus that relies heavily on driving to class, especially for commuters and people like me that live in the Village.” Says sophomore Samantha Krueger. “I think it would be helpful if there was just more parking in general, which I know is easier said than done. I think we need better communication of where people can park, but, more importantly, more parking.”
