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I don’t think I know anyone at Syracuse University who has only good things to say about our parking services. Students complain about their car being parked far from campus, long waits for permits, excessive ticketing and a lack of assistance. But the main complaint is usually about the cost of parking. With tuition almost $80,000 a year, it seems unnecessary for students to be paying extra to have their cars at school.

At SU, a permit for parking during an academic year is $905 in a garage, $458 in a surface lot, $165 on Skytop, $188 in Colvin Street Lot and $230 in Comstock Ave. Lot. Overall, there are nine surface lots, six garages and four perimeter lots. On its website, SU parking warns that spots sell out every year, and that not all students who want parking will be able to get it. This is a problem.

Not only do costs need to decrease, but SU also needs to expand its lots in order to accommodate all students who might want or need a car on campus.

Junior Caroline Grabowski expressed frustration about how expensive parking is given how poor her experience has been.

“I should not have to pay almost $500 to park in a surface lot where I have to dig my car out of the snow,” she said. “Half the time, there aren’t any spots in the lot I pay for because it’s so busy.”

Similar frustrations were mirrored by junior Blythe Reis.

“You need to drive to do anything in Syracuse, so it seems excessive to be paying almost $1,000 per year on top of our already expensive tuition,”she said. “I pay for a covered garage, but because of the unused reserved faculty spots, I often have to park at the top with no covering. What’s the point of paying so much if my car is rarely covered?”

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Syracuse spokespeople often justify the yearly rise in tuition to the university’s commitment to improving financial aid. If SU wants to make a more accessible environment, why wouldn’t they make additional service fees, such as parking, free? If the school truly means to create a more socioeconomic diverse school, they should not create unnecessary financial barriers that are contradictory to their goal to accommodate, not just decrease tuition.

“There is no one that hates SU parking more than me,” sophomore Grace Brashears said. She needs her car to get home, go to her job and travel to her required volunteer position for her major. To pay this bill, she said she needed to budget a payment plan to be able to afford a parking pass, as the cheapest permit on South Campus was still a stretch. Parking on South Campus created a new set of issues. Brashears adds, “the buses are almost always late so it takes 30-40 minutes just for me to get to my car. This has caused me to be late for my obligations several times.”

Once Brashears was able to afford a parking spot on main campus and made the effort to switch, the parking office was unresponsive. She shared that she called the office every day for a week with no response. They also ignored her emails. When she went to the office in person, they informed her that sometimes “that happens.” She continued to face issues, and went back and forth with the office for three weeks before receiving a new pass.

When asked about Brashear’s experience, a university spokesperson said that while Parking and Transportation aims to “provide timely service and responses to requests,” there are a variety of factors that can lead to longer waits for responses.

Brashears expressed frustration that even with a parking pass, she continues to get parking tickets and finds that streets such as Walnut Place and Waverly Avenue are always packed with cars because “no one has a decent parking pass.”

Other institutions have eliminated their parking fee, such as Indiana University. In 2022, IU’s regional campuses eliminated application fees, parking fees and the per-credit-hour fee for Advance College Project courses. This was done in an effort to make the college experience more accessible to students who might not have been able to afford it previously. While students must still obtain a parking permit, they do not need to pay.

While parking provides some revenue to the university, these fees are not necessary to its operation — especially with SU’s approximately $1.81 billion endowment, robust athletic department and other sources of revenue, including tuition. SU has previously shown it has the capability to subsidize services, as evidenced by residential laundry becoming free in 2021.

The current parking system we have does not work. SU students deserve better, more accessible and more affordable parking options.

Hannah Starorypinski is a junior political science major with a minor in public communication. Her column appears bi-weekly, and she can be reached at hkstaror@syr.edu.

Published on April 5, 2023 at 9:45 pm