David Pesek has been late to class on several occasions because of his difficulties finding a parking spot on campus.
Pesek, a junior double majoring in finance and business management, typically spends 15-20 minutes trying to find a spot. Recently, he said, it took him 45 minutes, making him significantly late to class.
This is a problem that many UCF students deal with every day. According to Courtney Gilmartin, Communications Coordinator of UCF News & Information, there are 12,500 parking spots for green permit holders on campus, while there are 27,295 green permit holders.
Gilmartin said that an additional parking garage is going to be built on October on Libra Drive, near the water tower, which will provide an additional 1,080 parking spots.
However, even though not all 27,000 green permit holders are on campus at the same time, that still leaves more than double the amount of green permit holders than there are green permit parking spots.
On September 25, President Hitt gave his annual State of the University address. When he spoke about UCF’s population recently reaching over 60,000 students, he said, “We will stop growing when our size becomes unmanageable.”
Michelle Bruder, a junior majoring in advertising and public relations, thinks it already has.
“Parking, classroom sizes, and more classes being moved to online because there isn’t enough space all reflect that our numbers are not being managed well,” she said. Bruder is upset that the only parking lot she was able to find spots in is now the future home of two new sorority houses.
Pesek agrees that our size is too big, believing that one additional parking garage isn’t going to be sufficient.
“If President Hitt doesn’t think our size has become unmanageable, I invite him to try to find a [green permit] parking spot on campus between 10 am and 5pm,” he said.
