The Mountain Parking Structure opened Jan. 20 after months of waiting and parking challenges for students. The structure added 825 new spaces for eight different permit types, in addition to construction vehicles.
The new parking garage is located by Rockwell Towers, where the Rho parking lot once stood. The structure features seven levels of parking, with the first two levels reserved for construction contractors, level three for Commuter, Administration, Main Lot and General Parking stickers and levels four through seven having parking for students with First Year, Page, Resident and Towers stickers.
The structure undoubtedly added many spaces for community members with cars, but the Student Government Association‘s efforts in aiding students with parking difficulties is not yet finished.
“I was actually having trouble thinking about that — like what can we do now?” Sarah Iglesias, senior class senator and Parking and Construction Committee chair, said. “[The committee] got renamed to the Parking and Construction Committee, so maybe it will be more on the construction side this semester, but I still think there are problems to address on the parking side.”
Just over two weeks from the structure’s opening, the Student Government Association held its first committee meeting Feb. 5 in the Howard A. White Center. SGA’s Parking and Construction Committee, spearheaded by Iglesias, welcomed students to join the conversation about parking on campus and the challenges that come with it.
Since the structure’s opening, Iglesias said she has heard a lot of positive feedback from the Pepperdine community. In the fall semester, she and two other SGA members participated in a research group, where they dove into the parking issues present on campus.
In talking with the Pepperdine community during her research last semester, Iglesias said she learned a lot about faculty’s struggles in parking on campus.
“They were like, ‘Yeah, it’s not just students — faculty struggle too,’ and they have vanpools and carpools to circumvent this problem. So I think the opening of this structure is something to be celebrated not just by the students but by faculty, staff and administration.”
With the structure’s opening, the committee’s leaders said they recognize the large amount of added parking spaces across all areas of campus. As a result, they are now pivoting their focus to how they can make parking on campus even more efficient with the amount of spaces currently available.
Freshman Class Senator Owen Braniff said a Towers resident in the committee’s first meeting informed him of issues he has been having with finding parking in the Towers lot. The student said the lot is nearly always full, but oftentimes occupied by students who do not have a Towers parking permit. Braniff said it is issues like these that the committee can strive to find solutions for.
Braniff said the first committee meeting opened up the conversation to allow students to share their own experiences with parking issues and construction noise.
“There’s a lot of discussion about ideas which are wonderful, but we’re gonna be developing those throughout the next week or two and then we’re going to actually be going to DPS and the Administrative University Development Committee to discuss with them the issues and what we can actually do — that way we can produce a beneficial resolution,” Braniff said.
First-year Allison Shah faces unique challenges when it comes to parking. Near the end of the fall semester, Shah received an off-campus housing exemption and has been commuting to campus ever since. However, she still has a first-year parking permit and cannot park where other commuter students can.
Shah said this creates issues beyond just finding parking. She often finds herself planning her entire day around her commutes, which can range from 18 to 45 minutes depending on traffic and parking availability.
“It’s definitely been different navigating it, and I feel like sometimes I’m making up for lost time in my day,” Shah said. “Like right now, I am currently doing homework and on a walking pad so I can get both things done at once.”
Similar to what SGA is now looking into, Shah said she believes the issue does not lie in the amount of parking spaces on campus. Rather, it has to do with the efficiency of parking and the number of students who have cars.
“Parking is just as successful [at other schools] as I feel like it should be here, and ideally, we do have a good bit of parking, it just doesn’t accommodate the amount of students that have cars on campus,” Shah said.
The next SGA committee meeting will be Feb. 19 at 11 a.m. in the HAWC on the second floor. Iglesias and Braniff said they highly encourage students to join these conversations, as they allow SGA to take the concerns of students and turn them into proposals that can be resolved at a higher level.
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Contact Amanda Monahan via email: amanda.monahan@pepperdine.edu
