Each quarter, students that live off of campus hand over their hard earned dollars in exchange for a parking pass.

These passes are a necessity for students whose schedules do not accommodate the bus system. The issue at hand is that during the winter months, these parking lots accumulate a lot of snow and unlike the roads around campus these parking lots do not receive the proper snow removal that they need. The snow quickly freezes, blurring the lines of the designated parking spaces and effectively turns the lot into a makeshift ice rink. Many patrons find themselves slipping and falling, and cars, unable to efficiently park on the ice, block one another in. If the university would deliberately plow the campus parking lots immediately after snowstorms, the lots would become much easier to navigate by foot and by vehicle. Although employing these snowplows for the additional time and work may become costly, the investment is in the best interest of the university’s students. The university could handle the snow problems in the parking lots by having the same people that clear the roads around campus also plow the parking lots at the same time, this only needs to be done a few times a year for the big storms.  This way the university may not have to pay that much more money in the end, just a few extra hours of pay every time a substantial amount of snow falls.

Hallie R. Morrow

Brett G. Hogg

C. Finn Graham

Dixie M. Samson