Hey, You Can't Park That Thing Here

Ah yes, the first week of class. You can smell the fear in the freshmen. And if you can get a frosh to look up from their schedule or their campus map, I'm sure you could see the fear in their eyes, too.

The sights and sounds of the new semester: freshmen sprinting across campus-- for fear they might be late, bands on the quad, free food at the student center, and who can forget everyone's favourite combination... the parking Nazis in full-force, and the frosh whining about the parking situation.

Time to grow up kiddies.

You are old enough to find a solution to your problems, mommy and daddy aren't hear anymore. You should be practicing self-relience. If you can correct the damage you mom made to the computer, you can certainly find an alternative to parking on campus. Try parking off campus. I've done it since I enrolled-- because I refuse to pay $60 (or whatever they charge now) to MAYBE get a parking spot on campus. I'll just save my money for something better, thank you.

Of course, right now that is not as efficient as it will be. Just give it time.

UNO offers a shuttle service from Crossroads Mall, about a 1/2 mile west of campus. Parking is free in the parking garage, which is NEVER full. You just have to allow for an extra 15 minutes to take the shuttle to campus-- 30 minutes the first couple weeks of class. You know, eventually people start ditching, carpool, walk, or find other (closer) free parking spots.

But I do have a complaint about the off campus parking. In a parking garage, that at best is 1/4 full at any given time. Why are they making more restrictions on where UNO students can park? I understand the parking garage is for mall patrons, but you have already reserved a couple levels just for mall parking, so why level further restrictions?

Why?

Did the bluehairs complain because they had to walk an extra 20 feet before they could start their daily 8 AM walk around the mall itself? It's not like people were parking in the handicapped spaces. And it's not like the level with the new restrictions was always full. So, why tell us we have to park in the back corner of the garage?

Let's think about this. What they have just done is opened the door for someone to target the cars of UNO students. We have just gathered the cars of students into an isolated section, out of site form most of the garage. That's just asking for a spree of breakins and car thefts.

Hundreds of cars, and students who will be gone for an extended period of time. A mall patron might appear at any time. A student, you know will be gone for at least an hour, and their cars are just ripe for the picking. When you have open parking, nobody knows exactly which car is a UNO car, and which is a mall car-- meaning the owner could appear at any time. Or the person parked next to a UNO car could appear. While it doesn't eliminate the potential, it narrows the striking window for thefts.

You had better believe if I see one UNO car having been broken into, I'll be talking to mall security (and campus security) in a heartbeat. They are just asking for trouble-- and they don't care, they all have reserved parking spots, in safer locations. As long as their cars are safe, they won't care. It's a croc, plain and simple.

So stay tuned for next week, when my rant will be about how UNO, Crossroads Mall, and the City of Omaha owe me for my car (or what was stolen out of it).