By Itzel Chavero
It seems Dominican has been doing their best efforts to reduce the stress of students who come to campus everyday wondering if they’ll be able to find parking and make it to their class on time.
Last fall, it was announced that Student Success and Engagement in a team effort with Campus Safety and the Sustainability Committee would be creating a carpool program launched this spring.
The purpose of this program is to help students, who are struggling to find parking, rideshare with other students.
Cason Brunt, dean of students, is one of the minds responsible for incentivizing this idea of creating carpool parking spots. He believes ridesharing is something students have been doing already.
Students, who are already carpooling with at least two other people and that come to campus at least twice a week, have the opportunity to sign up for a guaranteed parking spot.
Those who have signed up will then be selected from a lottery drawing, which will then decide who gets a designated carpool parking spot on the first floor of the campus garage.
As of right now, only three spots have been identified that would be offered to students, so they can start parking. Ideally, this initiative would transport around nine to 12 students with three to four of them being in each car.
This initiative emerges amidst the recent concerns students have about the scarcity of parking spaces. During the Fall 2024 semester, Dominican had more freshmen admissions resulting in an overcrowded parking space.
“We have worked across campus to see what we can do in real time knowing that unfortunately we are not positioned to create more parking spaces at this time,” said Brunt. “[However,] we also know there’s still a need to provide a response that’s hopefully beneficial to the greater campus community.”
The program is barely in its pilot phase and will first be tried out to see the responses from students. If there are many positive reactions to this, then there could possibly be more additional parking spots.
Commuter Giselle Valdez remembers the school trying to set up a carpooling system, but never heard about it again. This time, she hopes students take advantage of the opportunity.
“With the proper planning and exposure to the new carpooling program, I do believe it could definitely have a positive impact” she said.
Another benefit from this program would also result in the decrease of carbon emissions and pollution left from cars helping our environment little by little.
Brunt said he hopes that students benefit largely from the new carpool program.
“We are committed to hearing feedback and working together with students to devise solutions that hopefully are felt by the greater campus community,” he said.
Students meeting the carpool program requirements can email deanofstudents@dom.edu and their name will be entered in the drawing.
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