Student Government Association has been working since the summer on developing plans to better Sam Houston State University’s campus. This year, they geared their focus toward parking and have hit the ground running.
“I went around Huntsville and ended up at University Heights Baptist Church and brokered a deal with them,” Student Body President Phil Lund said. “They are going to allow us to use roughly 150 of their parking spots.”
The church is letting students use the parking spots for free. According to Lund, with the construction of a new building near the chemistry building, the campus has lost a large parking lot.
“We lost that entire parking lot, but we have already built about 90 spots over by the CJ building and gosh–I can’t even tell how many by South Paw,” Lund said. “That brings us to almost a net gain of parking spots since last year.”
SGA recognizes parking as a major student concern.
“Students are always talking about parking, and we were like you know what? Let’s just go ahead and see what we can do about it,” Lund said. “When you think about getting a parking spot, that’s a hard thing to do. We know that this is a big issue for students.”
SGA plans to continue searching for parking spots throughout Huntsville for students to use. They are also considering looking into getting a shuttle to help students get from place to place.
“That’s something I’ve been working on personally through SGA,” Lund said. “SGA gives me the chance to connect the university in ways that should have been done before, to make those connections between the students and the administration and the students with organizations.”
SGA currently has about 35 senators for 20,000 students. This year they will be looking to get a better representation of the student body.
“Nobody can tell me that (35’s) a good representation of the students,” Lund said. “The first thing we are going to work on is getting our recruitment up so that we can get a good representation of the students.”
SGA will also be looking into hearing from other organizations in order to better understand what the students are wanting. They are doing this in attempt to provide direct communication from the students to the university.
“By the end of this administration, there should never be a time where a student says ‘When did that happen?’ or ‘I didn’t know about that,” Lund said. “They should be informed about everything going on here on campus.”
Students complaining about little parking available aren't opening their eyes and looking. There are thousands of public parking street spots all over side streets walking distance from campus.
Students complaining about little parking available aren't opening their eyes and looking. There are thousands of public parking street spots all over side streets walking distance from campus.