Ash Pickett is a Business Administration Junior and opinion columnist for Mustang News. The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Mustang Media Group.
Cal Poly announced that seven-day paid parking on-campus will begin on Feb. 1, 2025. The revenue they get from this new policy will directly fund the maintenance of Cal Poly parking facilities, which, by California Law, must be funded by the campus without the help of state or tuition funding.
On the surface, this might seem like a few extra dollars for students to shell out occasionally. But, when we look closer, we see that this policy has many upsetting implications.
Students with various involvements will be less inclined to attend weekend events. This can decrease club participation, motivation, or the ability for student leaders to attend crucial events like Open House and attendance to campus-wide events.
“This is just another barrier for our engagement,” said Justin Chan, the President of Cal Poly’s Chinese Student’s Association – one of the largest cultural clubs on campus.
I attend meetings and events almost every weekend on campus, and I can’t imagine paying $6 for a two-hour maximum or having to walk home in the dark alone after a late meeting.
In a September 2024 interview, Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong told Mustang News about the academic and social benefits of students spending more time on campus. He said that, in order to succeed, students “need to want to live on campus” and that “it’s about taking pressure off of the community.”
This seven-day parking policy, however, is a disincentive for students to visit campus and stay engaged with the community. It’s another barrier to getting off-campus students to live come to campus and pay extra for parking when they can live off-campus and save themselves and their visitors that expense.
Cal Poly holds its place at the top as the most expensive of all the California State Universities. Students already pay absurd amounts in tuition, questionably high fees, and put up with ridiculous existing parking rules and congestion on and around campus.
I understand the parking services budget is separate from tuition, but this ends up as another fiscal burden to tack on top of the rest of student expenses and obstacles.
Not to mention the limited public transit schedule on weekends – buses only run one way and operate with fewer hours. A common rationale for limiting parking is to encourage the use of public transit and thus reduce congestion and environmental impact.
Still, the bus schedule is reduced on weekends. My bus home would take 45 minutes instead of a five-minute drive.
This is even more difficult for students with office hours or weekend finals. It might’ve been my final straw if I had to pay extra money to take my Accounting final last year – the same day as the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.
The same goes for students who work on-campus jobs, which don’t receive free or even discounted parking. Student employees working over the weekend will have to pay more for individual day parking passes, buy an expensive quarter-long parking permit (which is never guaranteed due to the lottery system), or park far away and walk to campus.
On top of all that, non-Cal-Poly-residents will now have limited access to nature around Cal Poly – think the P hike, Poly Canyon trails, architecture graveyard, the outdoor track…all of it will be that much less accessible to students and San Luis Obispo citizens alike.
And what about supporters: family, friends, loved ones? Guests must face this extra barrier to visit their students, especially first-years seeing supporters for the first time in a while or on-campus residents moving in and out of housing.
To a certain extent, I can understand why Cal Poly wants to implement the seven-day policy. For one, they’ll be joining the majority of CSU campuses, which have seven-day paid parking policies.
Transportation and Parking Services stated that in recent years, “the number of parking lots and spaces throughout campus has been reduced in support of the Cal Poly Master Plan,” and thus there is “decreased funding for parking facilities maintenance and operation.” Money to fund those operations needs to come from somewhere, so Cal Poly is turning to seven-day parking.
This solution, however, doesn’t seem very community-friendly as discussed above. It’ll drive people away from campus on the weekends, reduce student involvement and overall campus life, and negatively impact the lives of campus employees.
