Administration Speaks on Campus Parking

Students have plenty of spaces to park on campus, according to administration. After a report in the Stampede last month (Feb. 9) suggested otherwise, President Bill Greer and Director of Property and Risk Management Brent Nipper met with the Stampede to provide more information regarding the parking situation.

According to Nipper, there are 914  students with registered vehicles including Milligan and Emmanuel students but excluding students with Emmanuel Village stickers.

Nipper recently recounted the parking spaces on campus and said there is a total number of 960 parking spaces available to students (1,125 if you include Emmanuel). The 960 count includes handicapped parking spaces available to students, parking areas shared by faculty and staff and the canyon parking lot.

“I have never observed a time where there wasn’t space for students to park,” Nipper said. “Are there times when you can’t park right by the building you want to park by? Yes, there probably are times, but until the canyon parking lot is full, there are available spaces. They are just not popular spaces.”

Greer echoed Nipper, saying there are more than enough parking spaces for students, but they simply may not be their preferred parking choice.

“You may have to park closer to a different residence hall than your own, but it is still a privilege that we grant all of our Milligan students at no additional cost to them. I don’t want that estimate to be undervalued,” Greer said.

Greer said that as a graduate student at University of Tennessee he had to pay around $300 for a campus perimeter pass and park in a field where a shuttle picked him up and drove him to the main campus.

“It’s all a matter of perspective,” Greer said. “We are a small enough campus that even if you have to park in the farthest away spot, it is still not as far as it is going to be if you were on a sprawling, impersonal campus.”

Nipper said one of the reasons Milligan does not charge for parking passes is so that more students will fill out the vehicle registration form and pick up a parking sticker. These color-coordinated stickers serve as an extra security measure to identify who is on campus and parked where they should be.

“We want to make sure that the cars here do in fact belong here and that they are Milligan personnel working here or going to school here,” Greer said.

Some have suggested adding new parking lots to solve the parking frustrations, but Nipper said adding new parking lots is a lot more complex than one may think.

“There is a misconception that if you have a flat piece of ground that you can pretty inexpensively create a parking lot, and that is not necessarily true. There is a lot that goes into it, and it can be expensive,” he said.

Nipper added that even if more parking lots were to be created, they would be farther away than the current parking spots and would not address the issue of convenience.

Greer said, “It’s a tricky proposition to keep the balance, because you want plenty of parking, but you can’t afford to have so much parking that it is empty part of the time just so that it’s convenient for everyone.”

Greer said there is a long-range plan that serves as a possible vision for the Milligan campus that includes more parking and housing.  

“It all just depends on the needs of the student population, and that is just what is drawn in for now,” he said, gesturing to the map that includes a sketch of additional parking. “Over time as enrollment dictates and financing allows these would be built perhaps according to this plan.”

Nipper added, “And to accommodate a higher number of students would be the assumption behind the expansion.”

Below is a chart of the total number of students and vehicles registered.