For students who want, or even need, a car on campus, the inconvenience of dealing with BC student parking can outweigh the convenience of having the accessibility of a car.

Amanda Terzian, a sophomore in the Connell School of Nursing, knew that she would need a car for her off-campus clinical placement at the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System in West Roxbury. Not easily accessibly by T or bus from Boston College, the site can only conveniently be reached by car.

It’s important to realize that there are a number of different student parking categories. Some of the permit categories include graduate and law students, evening or graduate students, commuter undergraduate students, and resident undergraduate students.

These groups, except for the resident undergraduate students, have access to both the Beacon garage and the Commonwealth garage. The resident undergraduate students, however, are limited to the Edmonds Hall lots, the Mod lot, the Shea lot, and limited spaces on the Newton and Brighton campuses.

Despite the fact that undergraduate students are given far fewer space options than the other categories, their permits are the most expensive. For example, the graduate and law students pay $240 per year, evening or graduate students pay $112 per year, and commuter undergraduates pay $660 per year. But the resident undergraduate students are subject to a $480 fee per semester, making that a $960 fee for the academic year.

Now let us also examine the inconveniences a student with a car on campus must face. First, cars must be moved “off campus by 11pm the evening prior to scheduled home football games,” according to the Boston College transportation website. The site explains that student cars may be parked on Newton campus during these days; however, it is likelier that a student will have to park at the Brighton campus on that Friday afternoon or night before the game.

Granted, football games bring impressive crowds of people, and ensuring parking availability for alumni and families is important to foster game-day spirit. But football games aren’t the only cause of parking inconvenience.
Forecasted snow also necessitates moving a car out of the Edmonds or Mod lots. The problem isn’t so much the fact that the car must be moved, but it’s the process by which it must be moved that creates the most inconveniences.

Often, students with parking permits will receive an email a mere few hours before the car must be moved mandating that it be moved to the Commonwealth garage in order to avoid towing. For students who receive emails on their phones, for example, the notice is received immediately; but if a student is in class, or doesn’t check his email immediately, he faces ticketing and even towing fees if he cannot move his car within the given window of time.

And even when the car is moved, the next morning (or whenever Boston College Transportation and Parking Services deems appropriate) the car must be moved out of the Commonwealth garage and back in to the Mod or Edmonds lot within a similarly unforgiving brief window of time.

Undergraduates (not commuter students or the other groups listed above) do not normally have access to the Commonwealth garage; their permits are not equipped with the technology to open the garage gates automatically. The student, then, finds himself in an even bigger predicament if he cannot move his car out of the garage during the time frame that BC sets.

For example, if a car is to be moved out of the Commonwealth garage between the designated hours of 8am to 10am, which is the only time the gate will open for resident undergraduate students, the student faces having to pay an overnight parking fee and other inconveniences if he or she has a class, a meeting, or another obligation that morning.

There obviously has to be a structured parking policy in order to allow access to cars on campus for students. And, due to the limited amount of parking, such policy should be enforced. But it should be enforced with the students in mind.

Parking does not have to be such a hassle for undergraduates; students who are willing to pay almost $500 per semester on parking should not be burdened with the stressful scenario of having their cars towed because they were in class.

For students like Terzian, parking on Brighton after a long day of work that begins with a 6:30 am departure from campus is less than appealing. But after coming back to campus and driving through the Mod and Edmonds lots to find no empty spaces, Brighton is the only plausible option.

Why not designate a limited number of spaces in either of the garages to undergraduate parking? If this is impossible, there still must be a better solution than what is currently in place. Boston College Transportation and Parking Services should be able to assess the number of students with parking permits and allot the same number of spaces available to undergraduates on campus.

For the amount of money these students are paying, forcing them to walk from Brighton or park on Newton and take the bus back to campus, is absurd, especially for students, like Terzian, whose primary reason for having cars on campus is out of academic obligation.