You’re reading a story from Sidelines 100, a project showcasing a century of student storytelling at Middle Tennessee State University. Sidelines 100 plans to highlight 100 stories from the newspaper archives this fall and spring.

This story originally ran in a previous edition of Sidelines. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay on top of all things Sidelines 100.

Finding a place to park at MTSU is detrimental to education, but a solution to the problems would be simple, Eric Steinberg, a student member of the Traffic Committee said last week.

“A lot of times students are 10 or 12 minutes late to a class because they have been looking for a place to park,” Steinberg said. “When people are always coming in late, it disturbs the class.”

The parking problem is not serious, but more of a “thorn in the side,” he said. Steinberg has been a staunch advocator for better parking conditions since 1980, when he began researching the parking situation.

Last week, Steinberg sponsored an advertisement in Sidelines inviting members of the MTSU community to attend the meeting and suggest ideas for alleviating the problem.

The student turnout was small, Steinberg said, but the Traffic Committee expressed interest in the suggestions.

Among Steinberg’s solutions is building a ramp garage behind the ROTC building, which he said would cost about $20,000, religning some of the parking spaces, which, under his plan, would create about 300 additional parking slots. And painting some of the yellow-coded areas to blue or green.

A survey conducted earlier this year by Director of Planning amd Construction Charles Pigg indicated that almost 500 parking spaces were available during school hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and nearly 300 slots were vacant on Monday and Wednesdays.

Pigg’s survey was misleading because parking lots are spread over a 500-acre campus and parking spaces cannot be found as easily as the survey leads the student to believe, Steinberg said.

The Traffic Committee has scheduled a meeting next week in hopes of more community input on the parking situation, Steinberg said.

“The reason I’m trying to get everybody fired up [about the parking] is because I don’t believe the ASB or administration is completely responsive to the problem,” Steinberg said.

“What I need is help,” he said.