Students at MCC no longer need parking permits
Jack Carroll
MesaCC Legend
Mesa Community College Students are now able to park on campus without needing a parking permit. In a recent email from the Public Safety Commander of MCC, Steven Lieber, he announced that “Parking Permits are no longer required for our MCCCD [Maricopa Community College District] Students.” “It was really a question of what the value was of having students register their vehicle,” said Mikel Longman, Chief of Police of the Maricopa Community Colleges Police Department, about the decision, “We thought ‘you know what, we’re an open campus, and students should be able to freely park and not worry about having to register their vehicles’.”
“Most colleges and universities charge for parking, ASU charges a ridiculous amount, but we have never charged for parking. Why would we require students to get a parking permit when there is no value?” The student responses to the change were happy, but slightly hesitant about it, with MCC student Brooke Donovan saying “I’m completely fine with it, except for the fact that people who aren’t from MCC can now park here.” Another student, Anita Farley seemed to be more okay with the idea “It makes people who aren’t students want to park, which might be a good thing but maybe not for the school.”Although students now have the ability to not use permits, faculty of the school is still required to use parking permits for employee parking areas, and everyone else is otherwise still subject to the same rules as before.
“We are still writing parking citations for parking in the employee parking areas without a permit, handicap and fire lane violations,” says Lieber in the email. Although the changes have been put in place, the Parking & Traffic Control section of the Mesa Community College website has yet to reflect these changes. Elements like the requirement for students to have a permit, the instructions for showing it clearly, and the financial penalties for not showing the permit are still visible on the website.
“All students and employees who operate a motor vehicle on college property must register their vehicle and display a valid parking permit on the vehicle.” says a now-outdated portion of the website. This could be an issue for students, since they may be inclined to get a parking permit after checking the official website for information, which would only result in wasted time and undue annoyance. The new rules for the parking permits are in place as of April 2.
