Although administrators have received no complaints, students say that they have had trouble with overcrowded parking lots on West Campus.
"It's common to have a lot of parking problems at the beginning of the school year because people are unfamiliar with the procedures," said Lewis Wardell, assistant director of Public Safety. "However, I haven't heard any complaints and was completely unaware that people have been having trouble."
Duke Student Government officials have made the issue a top priority and are trying to bring the issue to the attention of administrators.
"We are trying to make the administration recognize that it is an important issue which needs to be addressed and taken care of," said Trinity junior Takcus Nesbit, DSG vice president for student affairs.
Possible solutions to the parking issue would be either to build a new lot behind Edens Quad or to offer parking spaces on East Campus to West residents at a lower price, Nesbit said.
Trinity senior Richard Boykin received a ticket after parking illegally in the Wannamaker parking lot. "Parking is really a problem on West this year because there just aren't enough spaces to accommodate student needs," Boykin said.
A new parking lot on Whitford Drive, between the baseball and soccer stadiums, will be finished in mid-September, said Joe Pietrantoni, associate vice president for auxiliary services. The new lot, however, will be for employee and graduate student use, not for undergraduates, he said.
Furthermore, there currently are no plans to expand the number of parking spaces on campus for undergraduates, said Dave Majestic, director of transportation services.
Pietrantoni said that some lots have been overcrowded because of excess cars that do not have permits to park in those lots. He said, however, that the start of regular ticketing last Monday should eliminate the problem.
Many students said that the shortage of parking spaces will continue to be a problem because most upperclassmen are now living on West Campus. "Finding a place to park is a huge problem because the lots are always jammed. People have to park on the sidewalk and on the grass because there just aren't enough spaces," said engineering sophomore Patrick Martone, who received a ticket for parking illegally when he could not find a space.
Lettered parking permits are issued to students according to which campus they live on, said Chuck Landis, manager of parking services. "There are more cars on West Campus than on East Campus because freshmen traditionally do not bring as many cars as upperclassmen," Landis said.
During the past two years, an average of 17 percent of the freshman class brought cars. Among upperclassmen, 34 percent of sophomores, 47 percent of juniors, and 53 percent of seniors kept cars on campus, he said.
Wardell said the parking policy was not strictly enforced during the first week of classes to give students a chance to get settled. "We had temporarily suspended giving tickets for violations of the parking policy during move-in, just as we do for all special events which cause an abnormal parking situation," he said.
Last year, 7,454 permits were issued for the entire campus, excluding the Medical Center. Numbers for this year are not yet available. This year, during the first week of classes, 754 parking tickets were given out for parking violations, said Beth Campbell, manager of administrative services. During the same time period last year, 856 parking tickets were issued, she said.
"We have not written any more tickets this year then we did last year during the same amount of time," she said.
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