What would I like to know about Monmouth? Who is more important, the kids who might come to school here, or those who already do??

I think the biggest thing I would like to know about Monmouth is why more effort isn’t put into alleviating some of the major parking problems on campus. They have spent millions of dollars, of our tuition, to try to build a new dormitory behind the existing dormitories and the new Monmouth Activity Center near the gym, but have spent nothing to try and help those of us who already go to the school. There are many times that I feel like the school only concentrates on prospective students and ignores those of us who already go to the school. We pay tuition, which means we pay the president’s and most of the staff’s salaries, so why don’t we deserve some of the attention also?

I think that the MAC is a bad idea. They are adding a major facility supposedly to draw more “big name” schools to play against Monmouth’s basketball team, and to build a bigger fitness center, but nothing has been done to add more parking. The original gym will still stand, so no parking will be gained from that property. All of the planning the school has done for the MAC, but they have ignored a very significant fact: if no one can park at the MAC, no one will come to it. The surrounding residents are currently going against the application the university had to submit to the West Long Branch Zoning Board of Adjustment, and one of their main arguments is the fact that more people will be parking on the side roads, making the residents’ lives, understandably, more difficult. This concern could be simply addressed if the school made a plan for parking the increased traffic the new center would create.

Also, if both of the plans were to go through and be built (the dorm is being held up right now due to a lawsuit, filed by a group of residents who live around the area where the dorm is to be built, after the Board of Adjustment approved the project. The lawsuit has to prove that the Board acted against the township’s master plan and outside of the Board’s mandate to nullify the decision. It will take years to decide, and I think the same thing will happen with the MAC application, should it be approved, which I don’t think it will.), parking would become an even bigger problem because there would be increased interest in the school, and more people would apply and come here as commuters. The school doesn’t seem to put any limitations on the number of commuter students they admit, so as the interest increases, so will the number of people looking for the precious few parking spots there are now.
When President Gaffney took office a few years ago, he tried to “flatten the schedule,” or make more classes meet on Fridays, previously a day where no one had classes because everyone went out on Thursday nights. Part of his reason for this was that it would help improve parking because there would be less people on campus at some of the peak times. However, it has done nothing to alleviate the problem. What we need is a real solution, not just changes in the schedule and the addition of more features to draw more people to the school’s parking.

I think that a parking deck needs to be built. There is no more room to expand the parking lots, unless the school gives up on the MAC plans. The deck could be built on the current site of the lots located closest to the communications building and the current gym. It is on an interior location, so there wouldn’t be concerns about blocking a neighbor’s view or destroying their property values (another one of the reasons for blocking the recent proposed projects). It would be somewhat visible from the street, but it would not stand out like a sore thumb if done correctly. The construction could be started just after finals end in May and it should be completed by the time school starts again the following fall. The addition of a single new layer of parking may reduce some of the congestion issues on campus, and hopefully reduce the number of students who are obscenely late to or even miss classes simply because they can’t find a parking spot.

I think the administration needs to examine their plans for the future of Monmouth and see if the money that they are planning to use for these two projects might be better off used to alleviate some of the major problems on campus, the biggest of which is parking. Monmouth, by choice, is a commuter school that ignores its commuter students. I’ve been at this school for seven years, but I have yet to see any attempts, besides the addition of the small parking lot near the communications building (which was added simply because the building was built in a place not readily accessible by the main commuter lot) to try and alleviate the problems with parking. One of their solutions was to add valet parking and block off a large part of the lot to those who didn’t want to have their cars parked by the valets. However, this didn’t work, simply because there isn’t enough room for the amount of cars that need to be parked there. At the busiest times on campus, if a person manages to get the last spot, the furthest away from their building, they consider themselves lucky because there are dozens of people who aren’t going to be able to park. Many people have resorted to parking on nearby residential streets, but as soon as it starts to snow, they can’t park there anymore. Then, for this school year, the school gave away the commuter passes for free to anyone who chose to register, but didn’t turn anyone away. They don’t put a limit on the number of passes they give out each year. There hasn’t been a year where they have said, “we have this many spots on campus, so we can only give out this many parking passes.” I believe they have even given out nearly double the total number of parking spots on campus, without thinking that their actions may cause a problem.

I know that everyone always complains about the parking here at Monmouth. Everyone is always complaining, because it is the biggest problem that faces any student, but especially commuter students. Yet, the school’s administration can find the money to spend to build a new dorm, and even to build an activity center that would put even more pressure on the parking situation, but without giving any adequate proposal as to how to deal with that increase in the traffic the campus parking lots will suffer because of the new construction. The school needs to stop looking at ways to bring in more students, and start looking at ways they can help the students that are already attending the school. It’s not like we are asking for something that is impossible to fix. Through some simple controls, and through the diversion of funds to solving this issue instead of adding to it, the school could attract more students while making it a bit easier for the existing students to succeed. What I would like to know most about Monmouth is how they can ignore the needs of existing students, and how they can put the needs of students who aren't even at Monmouth yet in front of the needs of those who already pay to get a decent education and a parking spot.