The parking wars.
We’re having a lot of fun with emails around campus about the current parking crisis. None of this is new, of course. You go back to the first cars on a college campus and the first campus that installed parking lots and you find these same problems. (Seriously, I’ve seen it in archives.) This year we have a record enrollment — so more students and cars — and some ongoing construction eating into preexisting parking.
To the credit of the Samford administration, they are doing great work in solving the problem. We have shuttles and golf carts driving people back and forth. The university president and various vice presidents have been driving the carts around. And they’ve wasted no time in building a new parking lot which is already starting to accept cars. Meanwhile the construction equipment is starting to move out and go on to some other project, destined to ruin someone else’s parking.
So things are finally starting to return to normal a bit. And then the emails today. A campus-wide note told us of new cones for reserving spots. And then the reply-all emails, noting those times when cones are put in place to reserve a spot for some guest, only to never be used.
Like the ones above, which sat there, untouched, all day. And apparently that happens in a lot of the parking lots, according to the other emails. It made for an entertaining read. But, again, nothing of this is new. I have been pleased to share with colleagues that my president is out in the driving rain driving commuters and the vice president of student of affairs is doing this and that and the vice president of business and financial affairs is outside driving a shuttle. Truly, it is a unique place with an extraordinary response to a predictable problem. We’re pretty fortunate.
Today’s podcast features Jeremy Henderson following up on a story he wrote about a guy who wrote somethings on Facebook that have landed him in more than a little trouble:
This evening I had a 2,000 yard swim and a sloppy five-mile run. That follows yesterday’s 10K run. Now if all of my run could be on a flat track.