Some Fisher residential students received a late Christmas present from the College that they wished they could have returned: a new parking spot in Park & Ride.

“It was like a week or two into the semester when they told us we could no longer park in Lot D,” sophomore Ward resident Krystin Buckley said. “They e-mailed us on Friday and gave us until Monday night to move our vehicles.”

The reason for the move was to provide more parking spaces for commuter students. While this seemed like a quick fix for the school, many students felt that student input should have been considered.

“I thought it was absolutely ridiculous that they did not ask us or include any of our thoughts,” sophomore Caitlin Franz said. “Then when SGA held that meeting, nothing ever came out of it.”

The Student Government Association (SGA) held a meeting to attempt to allow students to voice suggestions to try to come up with a better resolution.

“It was funny, because the person in charge of the meeting was a commuter,” Franz said. “We brought up solutions, but it felt like they already had their minds made up.”

Despite student uproar, the residential students who were parked in Lot D had to move to Park & Ride, where several cars had been broken into the prior semester. While security promised that they would do a better job patrolling the area, some students were still very concerned. Allison Sams, a junior, was one such student.

“I had my car broken into in Park & Ride, so security gave me a Lot D pass,” Sams said. “Then they made me go right back out to Park & Ride. I was really upset about it.”

Security has been good about picking up these students from their new lot, but some incidences have occurred.

“I got a ticket in Park & Ride because I parked somewhere where apparently I wasn’t supposed to,” Buckley said. “Security picked me up from my car, didn’t tell me I wasn’t allowed to park there, then came back and gave me a ticket.”

While this parking issue made things difficult for resident students, ResLife did something that was a blessing for the campus. This spring, ResLife introduced an online housing process which created a much easier way for students to reserve their housing assignments. 

In prior years, students were forced to fill out several different forms and bring them to the ResLife office. Then there was the time spent waiting in line in Cleary to sign up for your room.

“I thought it was a heck of a lot better than how it was previously done,” junior Ryan Miller said. “Instead of having to wait for five hours because it was behind schedule, I finished mine in about two minutes.”

ResLife made the transition easier with several e-mails describing the process and made themselves available in the campus atrium the week before the housing selection.

Living on campus was quite the experience for Fisher students this year. Whether they were booted out of their parking lot, or used the Internet to snag a room, resident students had plenty to deal with.