Students and staff see problem as bigger than recent efforts suggest.
JESSICA VAUGHN
Staff Writer
At 5:45 a.m., the alarm clock screeches in junior Celeste Honaker’s off-campus apartment in Canoga Park
At 6:45 a.m., Honaker climbs into her car and heads to Pepperdine for her 8 a.m. class. She must leave one hour and 15 minutes early to get to class on time, and it is not because of traffic on the 101.
Honaker, like many other Pepperdine commuters, has to allow extra time to find parking on campus.
“Parking is especially bad on main campus,” Honaker said. “Residents park over night and take the commuter spots.”
Complaints have been made to the university about the parking situation and have finally been heard.
Dr. Robert Chandler, chair of the Communication Division, said there is not a parking problem.
“There is not a shortage of parking on campus,” Chandler said. “Parking is just not always available where people want to park.”
One solution discussed in fall 2004 and spring 2005 was to remove the gate in the CCB parking lot and make it open parking.
This idea had to be approved by the faculty in both the CCB and the International Studies and Languages (ISL) divisions. Not everyone was thrilled with the idea, and it did not pass.
One other option that was discussed was making the parking lot above the ISL building, the Seaver Academic Complex (SAC) lot, open parking, removing the faculty reserved spots and relocating them in the CCB lot.
Dr. Robert Lloyd, ISL Division chair, said that completely removing their spaces in the SAC was not ideal.
“We were not happy about losing all 18 faculty spots in the SAC,” Lloyd said.
Lloyd proposed to simply reduce the amount of faculty spaces in the SAC from 18 spots to eight, freeing up 10 spots for students.
This setup has left the ISL faculty content with the parking situation, Lloyd said.
“We needed a compromise,” Lloyd said. “We recognized the needs of the students to have more parking and the university recognized our need to park close to our building.”
The extra open-parking spots were introduced in the SAC lot the first week of classes in spring 2006 semester.
Students said opening only 10 additional spaces has not solved the issue.
“Ten extra spaces are not going to do much good,” Honaker said.
Junior Kiera Scholten said she also thinks more could be done to alleviate the “parking drama.”
“There is a parking problem on the entire campus because there is a lack of spaces available in places that are most used,” Scholten said. “They ought to build a parking structure in Rho parking lot.”
Chandler acknowledged that the parking situation is still something being worked out.
“The CCB is only a couple years old so it is a new experiment that still needs fine-tuning. The system needs time to adjust,” Chandler said. “A lot of people are working on trying to accommodate students and faculty.”
Chandler said he feels the process and current solution of opening up SAC parking is a step in the right direction.
“This is a positive, incremental step in solving the parking problem,” Chandler said. “Let’s try it.”
02-02-2006