Parking During the UWM Debate? Yeah, That Wasn’t Fun

Pang Yang has two jobs and on the days she has to work at both, she drives to campus. “I hate commuting,” said Yang, “but I have to do it.”

As students like Yang arrived on UWM’s campus yesterday, the scarce parking spots that are fought over daily were even fewer than usual. The Democratic debate in the Helen Bader Zelazo Center caused a campus wide backup of transportation.

As a fifth-year senior in the Education Services program at UWM, Yang has had to deal with the struggles of parking around campus for many years, but today was worse than usual.

Various emails were sent to students to warn and encourage them to prepare ahead of time for the unusual lack of parking spots immediately surrounding UWM’s campus.

One such email, sent from University Relations, informed students that traffic would be heavy around campus and to allow extra time to get to and from places around the area.

While students were given a fair, advance warning, many still struggled to get to campus even with advance preparation.

“I usually park outside the Union on Kenwood, but it was shut down today,” said Yang. “I was just irritated because I had to drive around more than usual.”

Many professors and faculty made a conscious decision to cancel classes in an effort to help students avoid the traffic, but some students just simply chose to remain at home to stay out of the jam.

Others took to Twitter about their frustrations.

 

 

 

Hamza Jaber is a sophomore at UWM and he said that parking surprisingly wasn’t an issue for him.

“I pay for a spot in the Northwest Quad,” said Jaber, “so I knew I was going to be fine; just having Kenwood shut down just made getting to the structure a little harder.”

When asked how difficult it would be for a student to get to campus if they did not read any emails about the street closures or alternate routes, Jaber said, “Well, if they came last minute, they would definitely be late to class.”

Bus routes and street closures will resume back to normal Friday afternoon.