Since I've been at USM for these past four years the parking situation has been just that, a situation, one in need of fixing. My freshman and sophomore years I stayed in Bond Hall and we had pretty good parking situation unless it was a football game coming up that weekend. The price of decals were pretty cheap as well when I first started at USM in 2006; I believe the price WAY back then was $50 for resident decals. My living situation changed when I moved off of campus starting my junior year and decided to become a commuter and have my parking choices cut back drastically! My junior year the decal for a commuter was either $75 or $85 and I found that I didn't have many places to park on campus and I had to leave home much earlier to make it to class on time. This semester, my last semester, the commuter decal went up to $135, maybe more and more people seemed to become commuters because commuter parking spots decreased even more.
I have nothing against the faculty at USM, but it seems like they and the staff have too many parking choices for the number of them compared to the number of students. The parking garage is supposed to handle this situation for commuters I guess, since that's who I heard it was for, but I will not be here to reap in those rewards. What the decision makers at the university could have done to solve the parking situation and save money was make ALL the spaces on campus available to everyone when you bought a decal and let the residents, commuters and faculty & staff fight over parking spaces throughout the course of a day. I think the faculty and staff would understand our excuses for being late to class, if they were made to stalk parking spaces everyday, and result to parking in the farthest gravel lot and make the trek to class just to get the ugly looks from their students for being late.
http://www.usm.edu/parking/
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