Camila Rios
Staff Writer
With an incoming class of approximately 600 students and new restrictions to on-campus lots, many students are expressing frustration with the University of La Verne’s parking situation.
“It’s great that La Verne is expanding because it benefits the school and community,” junior biology major Jessica Serrano said. “The downfall is that as the class sizes are growing, the school needs to as well,” she said.
This year’s freshman class is the largest ever, topping last year’s which had approximately 500 freshman students.
“La Verne should be consistent with the amount of incoming freshman they accept each year because the campus is already small,” junior biology major Teevee Mai said. “The wait list for classes is now longer and parking is worse this year.”
Adding to the problem is the change making on-campus lots open only to employees and campus residents. “As a commuter I have to leave earlier to ensure that I get to class on time because the shuttle usually takes at least 20 minutes” junior kinesiology major Natalie Estrada said.
There is also the upcoming closure of parking lot D during construction of a new multilevel parking structure.
“It would have been smart to already have a second shuttle lot open before changing almost all parking to residents only and shutting down D lot for construction,” senior physics major, Adam Cusic said.
Unless students have a city of La Verne parking permit, it is unlikely that they will be able to rely on finding a 90-minute or 3 hour parking spot on the street.
“To make it easier, the school could have made deals with the city to make sure we have more spaces available for students, at least during the construction of the new parking structure,” junior kinesiology major Richard Barreto said.
With all the change in parking, many are not too happy as they struggle with finding parking.
Commuters are able to park in parking lot D until the end of September, but that has limited space and most commuters resort to parking in the shuttle lot.
“It angers me knowing that the year in which the most change will be happening architecture-wise, we will also be having the largest change in student population,” senior English major Zachary Robertson said. “It seems like poor planning on La Verne’s behalf and it makes it seem as though all the school wants is more money.”
Camila Rios can be reached at camila.riosgomez@laverne.edu.
