You may have seen my tweet about wondering if one can sue a university for shitty ass parking. You might think “ha ha ha, everyone’s campus is shitty! What can you do?” I don;t think you quite understand just how bad it is. During the winter break, it would have been an amusing idea. After going back for two days, I am almost dead fucking serious. The place where I take my classes is a satellite campus that shares a building with 2 other higher education institutions. Okay, fuck being all sly and anonymous. It’s Texas State University at the Round Rock Higher Education Center. In one building is Texas State, Austin Community College, and Temple College at Taylor. Neat, right? Get your learn on 3 different ways when it’s (somewhat) convenient for you? A few brush up classes, associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s degrees? One somewhat central location? Fucking sweet, right?
Fucking sucks hairy pig balls.
1,737 (highest enrollment ever, up 14.1% since fall ’08) students, waaaaayyy less than that amount of parking spaces. Now, I don’t expect one spot per student, Christ no. What I do expect is to not be late for class every day because you’re having to stalk pedestrians for their spots.
Q: Why don’t you just quit being a baby and park far out and just ride a bus in?
A: There is no bus. There is no remote parking. Here’s a map. You see all that purple? That’s where students can park. Looks like a lot, doesn’t it. You would be wrong. The wrongiest wrong person who has ever been wrong. If you look closely, there are lines in that purple to show parking spots. I believe that they are true to form. As in, you see a section of 4 spots, there’s really four spots there. So those 3 lonely green spots? There really are two car sized parking spots for motorcycles. That’s it. Those poor bastards.
Q: So just park in those far out spots at the top of the map or way to the right. You need to be right up close to the building! What a lazy skag.
A: Every single purple spot was full. Every single spot. Every one. The only thing to do is circle until someone leaves. The problem is that THERE ARE NO MORE SPOTS. There is no other lot and there are no side streets. The next closest place is a hospital who will tow your ass so goddamn fast it’s amazing.
Q: It’s the start of the semester, it’ll get better with time.
A: Parking was almost this bad at the beginning of last semester. It barely got better. Barely. It’s much worse now. It will not be better. I promise you. Look at the map. You see that huge arc of street? See how it divides the parking lot? Over on the left, people are parking on that stretch of lot. To give them credit, the campus police only gave tickets to people without permits. As I was parking last night (I got so fucking lucky that I may have permanently lost any chance of getting any kind of parking spot ever) There were officers directing traffic. Directing. Traffic. This was some Black Friday/Tax Free Weekend At The Outlet Mall shit. This is wrong.
In the distance, you can see two more buildings going up. These I have now learned are the new ACC Round Rock buildings. And all I can say is THANK FUCK. These buildings are far enough out that they will have their own lots. But my GOD. It’s like they never planned for people to actually come to this campus. The nursing school will also be on this campus. It doesn’t look like it’s started yet, but you can only imagine how many more students that will bring.
In short, this is an epic clusterfuck.