RIPON COLLEGE - Parking problem result of miscount, Velorution still rolling strong in second year with 76% FY participation

SOURCE: Ripon College Days
By: Paul Meuer
Posted: 9/16/09
For many students the start of the new school year began smoothly, but for so many others, it began with frustration caused by an issue that is not new to campus.

By Sept. 2 students were required by law to remove their vehicles from the streets and to park within their assigned lots. There was a problem that arose because students had been told that all remaining lots had been filled up.

This is only the second year that students have not been able to park on the streets of Ripon between 3-6 a.m.

Ripon College President David Joyce noted that the biggest complaint he heard, "was parking."

However, according to Plant Director Brian Skamra, the parking problem was not an issue of availability; it was an issue of accounting.

Skamra said that when he was looking over parking and registration, he "returned to update the registration book and found an accounting error."

The Storzer storage lot, which has 178 spaces, listed 110. The upper campus lots were filled but there actually were 68 spaces available at Storzer.

The accounting error threw off the listed number of available parking spaces, but the error has been resolved and "we have put internal controls in effect to insure this accounting problem will not happen again," said Skamra.

Students who received parking tickets because they parked in Storzer lots prior to Sept. 11, will be granted a grace period and have their tickets discarded, stated Skamra.

Despite the concerns and the rumors, there was in fact no issue with parking availability this year, and measures are being put into action to prevent any such hassles in the future.

Some of the rumors in the midst of the parking space issue stated that the "Velorution Project" was failing.

"The Velorution is not failing," said President Joyce. "76% of first year students took bikes, and only 24% brought cars. Earlier studies showed that would make plenty of space available."

This is the second year for the Velorution Project, headed by Director of Publications & Institutional Image Ric Damm.

By keeping the number of students with vehicles down, the Velorution Project has helped the school avoid an actual space issue.

"It didn't make any logical reasoning to me," commented Joyce upon receiving the news.

Even though the "Velorution Project" has kept the school safe for now, plans for new parking areas are already underway.

Plans are being developed that will "create more parking spaces on campus by building asphalt lots in areas that will minimize the impact on campus green space and maximize availability to campus facilities," said Skamra. "I can assure you no one at the college wants this to ever happen again and we will work together to insure parking availability."