University District residents and Ohio State students blame the university’s dense student population for the lack of available parking both on and off-campus.
Ohio State is second in the nation only to the University of Texas in student enrollment.
Roger Deal, a retired government lawyer and resident of the University District since the early 1960s, said there was not a parking problem until the 1970s when OSU admissions skyrocketed. The number of available parking spaces, however, stayed the same.
According to enrollment records provided by the OSU Student Reporting and Research Services, admissions at OSU was 45,099 in 1970 — 16,286 more than a decade earlier and 24,587 more than in 1950.
Samir Kanuga, a senior in business, said he paid around $150 this quarter for an on-campus parking pass that does not guarantee him a parking space because the university sells more passes than it has spaces.
“There comes a point when it’s just too much,” he said. “They need to tell you your chances of finding a spot before you buy the pass. They are out to make as much money as they can. It’s almost negligence that they sell so many of these passes.”
Kanuga likened Ohio State’s overselling of parking passes to a situation involving AOL Time Warner Inc.
In 1997, AOL settled a class-action lawsuit filed by some of its customers because the company signed up more subscribers to its new unlimited access plan than it had the ability to handle.
Kanuga also said the parking problem at OSU is a density issue that could be alleviated if the student population was reduced through more stringent admission policies.
The OSU Transportation and Parking Services operates on a $14 million annual budget to build, operate and maintain all on-campus parking said Sarah Blouch, director of Transportation and Parking.
She said Ohio State sells 40,000 parking passes each year for its 30,000 available spaces.
“We have 3,000 empty spaces at peak hours,” she said. “They’re just not in the popular location. We don’t have ample land to allow everyone to park exactly where they want.”
Ohio State lost nearly 1,000 parking spaces last year because of construction and will lose another 1,000 this summer, she said.
The university, however, is building two on-campus garages that will bring an additional 1,625 new spaces in 2004.
She said a customer-based team of faculty, staff and students is scheduled to meet this spring to offer suggestions on improving the parking permit system.
In addition, Kanuga said university officials are not doing enough to solve the parking problem.
“I wish OSU would help in the off-campus area,” he said. “They are a contributing factor to the off-campus parking problem. If OSU doesn’t provide enough on-campus parking, then it will obviously flow off-campus.”
City officials were not able to supply past and present figures for the number of available parking spaces in the University District for comparison to student enrollment increases.
OSU could begin addressing the parking problem by decreasing the number of students it admits, Deal said.
He said the riots subsequent to the OSU football victory against the University of Michigan in November showed many OSU students are less than serious about getting an education.
Information obtained from OSU records indicates he could be correct.
Of the 6,171 freshmen that entered OSU during the summer and fall quarters of 1998, only 1,886 received diplomas four years later.
“We get a certain number of OSU students who don’t need to be here,” Deal said. “Make admissions tougher. More students equals more cars.”
An article appearing in the Feb. 28 edition of The Lantern did indicate admissions at OSU are getting tougher.
The average ACT score of new freshmen has increased from 22.8 in 1995 to 25.2 in 2002.
And according to the OSU Web site, 70 percent of the incoming 2002 freshmen class were in the top 25 percent of their high school class and 35 percent of those freshmen came from the top 10 percent of their high school class.
The Web site, however, mentioned nothing of the academic history of the remaining 30 percent of the incoming 2002 freshmen class.
Sylvia Efta has lived in the University District for 11 years. She said the off-campus parking problem rests with the university enrollment practices that, in her opinion, are designed strictly to generate income.
Ohio State charged $397 million in student fees for the 2001 – 2002 academic year.
Efta said university officials are apathetic to the concerns of the University Districts’ residents and “the president of the university should have to live here to witness what it is like.”
OSU President Karen A. Holbrook was unavailable for comment.
