BY THE CONCORD STAFF
As Bellarmine continues to expand, following the construction of Centro Hall, many students and faculty have had problems with parking.
Currently, 58 percent of full-time undergraduates live off campus, according to bellarmine.edu, which increases the need for commuter parking. In addition to this, Bellarmine’s enrollment continues to grow, while parking has not expanded in proportion.
Debbie Fox, director of the Department of Public Safety, said one of the major problems has been a lack of communication between students and her department. She said her office has received “no calls about students unable to find parking spaces.” If Bellarmine students want to see this issue resolved, then it is going to take more precise and clear reporting of specific issues with parking from the people who are complaining.
However, Bellarmine’s parking situation has seemingly improved. Before Centro’s completion, students voiced their frustrations with being unable to find anywhere on campus to park. The complaints still remain, but they’ve changed to students saying they’d like more convenient parking.
“Parking by the dorms is usually harder to find, but there is parking available in freshman,” said Jenelle Spoonamore, a sophomore who lives on campus.
To further this point, Fox said the concerns with parking have shifted more toward making parking more convenient for students as opposed to not having enough parking spaces for everyone. After the completion of Centro, more parking did become accessible on campus, but it may not be as convenient as students would like it to be. As a result of this, there are concerns about the walking distance from where students park to where they need to go.
To help remedy this, Fox has said that the Student Government Association (SGA) has planned to implement a new GPS device later this month to help “monitor the buses and shuttles in real-time around campus.” Students will be able to track buses through the companion app that will launch after testing. By using this new technology, students will be able to access the busses and shuttles efficiently, thus cutting down on the time spent walking to class, and reducing the need to spend a lot of time finding a spot close to a particular building.
In the future, Bellarmine can expect more planning for accessible parking as Fox intends on getting help from city parking officials in order to “monitor parking plans and advise us in what direction we’re going in.” Having assistance from the city parking officials will surely serve to benefit the current situation and allow for a more efficient parking system.