We’ve all noticed the beautiful changes around campus. From the completion of Café Q, to the nice new admissions offices in Echlin, the construction seems to be dwindling and the pictures we looked at last year are coming to life. But the biggest talk around this little Quinnipiac town, aside from the ridiculous rat protesters, is the parking… or, lack thereof.

Clearly this does not fall into the beautiful category of new things around campus. The parking situation for commuters is beyond annoying and it concerns me that the Quinnipiac administration is able to build multi-million dollar buildings, take on the medical school endeavor, accept far too many freshman, but forget to stop and think, “Wait, where will all the upperclassmen park?” Did anyone realize that increasing the number of residents at York Hill from about 600 people last year to nearly 1200 this year would create major parking issues on the main campus? Apparently not.

I remember driving to campus last year and North Lot would start to fill up between 11 a.m. and noon time; now you’re lucky to get a spot before 9:30 a.m. or security starts to send you to Hogan Lot. The main problem here is the overflow of York Hill students using up all of the commuter parking spots.

The key word here is commuter. We are commuters for a reason. We chose to live off campus and need to provide our own transportation to and from school. When we made this decision, we assumed there would be ample parking for us. Well, fail. We didn’t realize there would be roughly 600 more students fighting for the same spots we need. And yes, I say need because quite frankly York Hill students do not need to park on campus. They are provided with a shuttle system to bring them to and from campus, whereas commuters do not have that option.

I realize there are some mornings where students want to grab their coffee or breakfast from Dunkin’, but really, you don’t need to do this every day. I’m sure the students from York Hill get just as frustrated with parking troubles as the rest of us do, so please do all of us a favor and use the shuttle. I’m sure a good amount of students do use the shuttle, and thank you to those who do. Please continue to do so. For those of you who do not use the shuttle, I hope there is a legitimate reason as to why.

I know my complaining about this situation is not going to change anything; we all know the only people who can actually make the final changes around Quinnipiac are the administrators. So administration, what are you going to do? Sweep this under the rug and hope students from York Hill start to use the shuttles? Well, if you ask me, there is one simple solution to this problem. (Unless of course you plan on building a massive parking garage on Sleeping Giant, but I don’t foresee that happening.) There needs to be a time restraint set for when York Hill residents can park on campus.

Students who lived in Whitney Village up until this year have dealt with this parking condition and were perfectly capable of using the shuttle that was offered to them. Why can’t this rule be applied to the York Hill students? They should not be allowed to park on campus between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., the busiest hours of the day, and then they can drive down for night class, meetings and library time. I know that these residents would not be happy with my suggested plan, but let’s be real here, the parking is awful and commuters should have priority to North Lot. End of story. Unless Quinnipiac is going to start sending shuttles all around Hamden to pick up students, we should have access to the parking lot before students who have a shuttle service available to them.