At the beginning of every semester, the Chabot student parking lot is always a problem for parking, and the ticket dispensers don’t work. Sometimes these problems cause students to be late or even drop out of classes.

Omar a student here at Chabot says “I don’t park in the student parking lot I mostly park down on Hesperian I know it’s farther to walk to my class but I don’t have to worry about paying or about being late to class because the time I come sometimes it is packed” In this case many students do not park in the student parking lot but in the parking lot of Quickly, Burger King, or down Hesperian Blvd. just to save money or not to worry about the hassle of the student parking lot.

Campus Safety Officer Moore says, “We have received numerous complaints about ‘there isn’t enough parking’ or ‘the ticket dispensers don’t work’ unfortunately, the amount of parking is not an easy fix, but the complaints of the ticket dispensers are easy to resolve if a student contacts the Campus Safety Department in a timely manner. There’s a lot that we can do to resolve ticket dispensers but nothing for student parking spaces.”

At the start of the semester some students take other alternative transportation to get at Chabot “During the first three weeks I always take A.C. Transit. I live in Oakland and I have to get up earlier but it’s worth not worrying where to park? Or if there’s enough space to park” says an anonymous student. The Campus Safety Department encourages students to use other alternatives like; carpooling, Uber, Bicycles or taking A.C. Transit.

While students still complain about not having enough parking spaces or problems with the ticket dispensers another dilemma students have is the fact that faculty/staff are parking in student spaces even though they have their own. The student parking lot has just over two thousand parking spaces with more than fifteen thousand students attending Chabot, yet the faculty/staff Parking lot has just over 400 parking spaces. Why do they park in the student parking lot? Maybe because of close parking. Some students question this practice, do the faculty/staff members get citations for parking in the student’s spaces? According to officer Moore, “The faculty/staff can park on campus in any parking lot as long as they display a valid parking permit.” faculty/staff has more parking advantages than students.