De Anza students need to stop complaining about parking

De Anza students need to stop complaining about parking

Samantha Jill UyBico, Staff writer

De Anza students need to stop crying about the parking lot situation. You’re college students, not babies. Use your brain to figure it out.

The campus parking lots have everyone whining about the tight-fitting spaces and the trouble in even finding a vacant spot in the first place.

The first two weeks of class are even more impacted in the lots because let’s be honest: everyone shows up the first few weeks so they won’t get dropped from their classes.

Sure, you may feel like gouging your eyes out once you hit 15 minutes of driving in circles looking for a parking space, but you have to ask yourself if you deserve it. What have you done to help yourself aside from show up?

If you take a class starting at peak hours and expect to find a spot right away, you’ll be gravely disappointed.

Just show up about 20 minutes earlier so you won’t stress out about being late for your first class.

If you drive to school with someone every day, there are blocks of green-painted parking spaces in lots A, B, C, D, E and the Flint parking structure reserved for those who filled out an application with the campus police requesting the convenience of carpool parking. The application can be found here: https://www.deanza.edu/collegelife/pdf/Studentcarpoolapp.pdf

Having a reserved area for your carpool vehicle can save you time.

“We used to show up 30 minutes before class until we discovered the reserved carpool parking,” says De Anza student Danica Miller, 24, liberal arts major.

Now, Danica and her carpool can get away with showing up five minutes before class and there are always a few spots open right away.

Danica’s first class of the day starts at 11 a.m., which is a peak hour for parking lot traffic havoc. Luckily for her, she carpools and was smart enough to take advantage of the resources offered to her as a De Anza student.

De Anza also has reserved parking for hybrid vehicles. Apparently, if you care enough about the environment, you will be rewarded with amazing parking spots.

For the rest of us driving our regular cars without carpool, it’s a big game of parking spot roulette in the mornings.

But is the parking really that bad? Students who take late afternoon or evening classes have no idea what you’re talking about since it’s smooth sailing in the De Anza lots after 3 p.m.

A solution to the parking problem is to try and avoid the peak hours for classes. Everyone opts for morning classes, but those who aren’t morning people don’t deal with the parking burden.

Perhaps if students took more classes in the afternoons and evenings, and fewer in the mornings, then parking would be more manageable.

Not everyone can swing that type of schedule, but perhaps it would help those who can attend classes late in the day.

If it makes De Anza students feel any better, the parking lots could be worse. At least you don’t have to go up and down a hundred stairs just to get to class. Sorry, Foothill.