OU research campus students are still affected by the new parking permit policy at Lloyd Noble Center, despite OU President David Boren’s allocation of 600 extra spots to the north central side of the lot.
In the past, students and faculty members who work at the research campus would park in the southeast corner of the Lloyd Noble parking lot and then walk across Jenkins to avoid having to park in the research center parking lot and pay $195 for a parking permit.
Now, those going to the research campus must pay for a permit or walk twice the distance from the designated free parking spaces.
Zack Taylor, third-year bioengineering graduate student, works at the Stephenson Research Center.
Taylor said the parking lot at the research center is generally crowded early in the mornings.
With the new permit policy, he said he is concerned the parking lot will fill up before 8 a.m. and cause a parking problem.
“If we have to pay to park over there (Lloyd Noble Center) now, then most people are going to just try and park over in our parking lot,” Taylor said.
“I don’t see why they are doing that over there. It’s not like they need the space or anything, there was always plenty of parking spaces open.”
Taylor said if the parking lot is full every day, the faculty and staff could get upset and push the university to turn it into a faculty lot.
“I really hope OU changes their policies, because this really could turn out bad,” he said.
First-year microbiology graduate student Mark Pinkerton said his previous university didn’t have parking issues like OU.
Pinkerton said permits at Delaware Valley College cost $90 for the entire year, but students could park wherever was marked as student parking.
“We had separate parking lots with the faculty and staff, but we didn’t have any separate student lots like OU does,” he said.
Stephenson Research Center associate researcher Yu Hua Li said the research center parking lot will be full all day.
He said that he is okay because he has always bought a parking permit but understands why people are upset.
“People cannot park for free anymore over there in the Lloyd Noble parking lot, and they will all come park in our lot now,” Li said. “It will be very crowded.”
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TheJR 1 year, 9 months ago
God forbid you have to pay for a parking permit like the rest of us. I'm so sorry for your loss.
cmcnabb 1 year, 9 months ago
There is plenty of parking on the Research Campus. You can go anytime of the day and find parking...maybe not next to the front door, but there is plenty of parking even if all those that parked at LNC and the Chemistry people are added! Like I said before CART needs to add a stop at the LNC, corner of Jenkins and Imhoff to accommodate those that want to park free at LNC and ride the shuttle.
stelmo 1 year, 9 months ago
I'm with cmcnabb. Main Campus has a relatively convenient way of parking free and getting to where you need to go in a reasonable amount of time via the LNC shuttle. I think it only makes sense to offer the Research Campus a similar service if we have to park farther away. Then again, one could hop on the LNC shuttle up to campus and then catch the trolley back down to the NWC... kind of a pain, though.
Also, I was talking to some people about how much money the new parking regs at LNC are really making for OU. I think the most cars I've ever seen in the SE corner is 40. So, that's, what, $8000 if everyone bought a pass? I think the figure given this week was that around 12,000 parking passes are sold each year. You could make more money charging everyone who wanted to buy a parking pass anyway $1 extra. That's a bottle of Coke. It seems a lot more reasonable to me to ask someone to pay $196 instead of $195 rather than ask someone to pay $195 instead of $0.