For as long as I have been attending Eastern, there has been one thing that I have heard people complain about more than any issue on campus.

No, it’s not the registration recording lady – it’s parking.

This issue seems to be the eternal struggle between staff and student, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.

The problem doesn’t seem to be not enough total parking spots, but not enough student parking spaces in the areas that are used the most by the students.

Certain areas like the parking lots around the Lantz Building, the lot between Coleman Hall and Taylor Hall and the lot across from Lawson Hall. The Coleman-Taylor lot and the Lawson lot have long been two of the worst lots on campus, but the two new parking lots on the south side of the Lantz building has wrestled that title away from the both of them.

The problem with each of these lots is that there is just not enough space for students to park.

In both of these lots the staff spaces out-number the student spaces by a good percentage, but somehow are never filled. Meanwhile, the student spaces are short in number and are always filled to the brim.

This is especially true in the new Lantz lots.

When the university first put in the new student lot this summer, I was pretty excited about the notion of being able to park there during the morning and afternoon hours. But what I soon found out was that every other student with a vehicle on campus felt the same way.

At first it wasn’t that hard to find a spot over there because not too many people knew about the lot, but then it started to get really crowded with only 42 spots there.

So once those were filled, there was no where to go but up to the staff lot which has 80 spots and never really has more than eight to 10 cars in the lot.

But that got old after a few tickets. So now I have nowhere to turn, and apparently nowhere to park.

While the 80 to 42 margin really doesn’t seem that big, let’s not forget about the the other 35 staff spots that litter the other side of the Lantz building. So now the margin is 115-42.

Sure, the students have the Stevenson lot to park at, but that is filled with cars from people who live in either the Triad or Stevenson. So that’s out of the question.

So, then I thought maybe it was just at the time that I go to the Student Rec Center, which is usually in the morning hours, that the problems were occurring.

So I went to the Rec on three consecutive weekdays at 1 p.m., which is after lunch for most people, and found that of the 115 spots that the staff members have, on average, 69 of the spots were not filled, while only one of the students spots was not filled. Sixty-nine to one. Anyone else see a problem?

While all of these numbers may seem like a lot to digest, there is one simple solution to the entire problem.

Take the student lot, with 42 spots, and make that into a staff lot. Then take the upper staff lot and make that a student lot to make the number of student spaces 80, and the number of staff spaces 77.

This solution isn’t that hard. Just move the blue sign to one post and the red sign to another. I know that will take a month of paperwork, but I hope it can get done.

Anthony Braviere is a senior journalism major and guest columnist for The Daily Eastern News. His e-mail address is [email protected]. Columns are the opinion of the author.