By: Morgan Williams
The TCU Parking Crisis: Move over stuwireless, there’s an even more unreliable and frustrating situation on TCU’s campus. TCU’s student parking has never been a shining quality of the school. However, during the fall semester of 2018, it has become worse than ever before. Texas Construction University has multiple projects taking place on campus. But, these projects seem to be at the expense of students’ ability to park on campus. This campus has made way for the increasing number of applicants; however, it has neglected a central need for current students. But, as any good student does, we have adapted to this issue. In particular, I have noticed that there are four unique ways in which students are dealing with the lack of parking. I’ve also noticed that the way students handle parking translates to their approach to school.
The Walk-to-Class Students
I would like to start off by saying that I want to be like you all when I grow up. Your rock-solid calves that have been chiseled by your trek from Sandage Avenue all the way to Smith serve as a daily reminder of my laziness. You all are the people everyone wants in their group project—you all meet your deadlines; your work is never lazy; you can take an issue someone else has imposed on you and find a way to make it a positive. Just like you can turn a group’s failing project into graduate-level work, you all turned the parking crisis into daily cardio and have basically Pretty Woman’d the TCU parking crisis. If TCU’s parking is the hooker version of Julia Roberts, you all are Richard Gere. And if anyone thinks that you all are the type of students who let anything get in their way of over-achieving, they are making a big mistake, HUGE.
The Uber-to-Class Students
When I see one of you hopping out of the backseat of a Subaru with a 55+ year-old man in the driver’s seat and an empty passenger seat next to him, I feel kind of silly for freaking out over the parking situation so much. I’m sure you all also wonder why the rest of us are freaking out. Nothing really stresses you out because you seem to have an easy out for everything. When a classmate asks you whether or not you have started a paper, they can be guaranteed that their question will be met with an alarmingly relaxed, “No, why, have you?” I would like to clarify to all of you that, yes, to the rest of us, this paper is basically our overdue baby that we have been trying to birth for about four months now. While we are going through multiple breathing techniques during the extended and painful labor of a brain children, you all refuse the epidural, push for about ten minutes, and end up with a 6-pound, 2-ounce perfect paper that receives a 97%.
The Create-Their-Own-Parking-Space Students
Your creativity never fails to amaze me. Your abilities range from making it look like your car is legally parked at the end of the line, to successfully parking half of your car on top of a median with the other half on the ground, to somehow making an F-250 fit into the compact-car spot (red truck with Florida plates and a YETI bumper sticker, I am talking to you). As young students, you all refused to color in the lines, and it now shows in your parking and your academics. You all can often be spotted wandering the halls of Moudy North searching for some sort of artistic break through to add to your portfolio. But, you all need not look any further than the parking lot outside the building. Picasso himself could not have come up with some of the ways you all have made parking space appear out of thin air. Your creativity in the lot proves wrong any parent who has claimed that a degree in fine arts or graphic design is impractical.
The Ignore-the-“Parking-Permit-Only”-Sign Students
Many people would assume that you all are very similar to the create-their-own-parking-space students, but they’re quite wrong. Those students break the implied rules while you all look the rules dead in the eyes and spit in its face. As students, you constantly test the boundaries of the classroom. Your classmates can anticipate that most of their own or their professors’ lecture comments will end with one of you raising your hand and going off on a counter argument that begins with, “Actually, if you think about it….” Your Shakespearian Literature teacher asks you all to write a paper on the literary devices that Shakespeare employs, and you all hand in a paper on how requiring students to still read Shakespeare is more evidence of the backwardness of the US education system. So, you all keep sticking it to the man because someone has to do it. And maybe, someday, the man will stick another parking garage on campus instead of more student housing.
