Every spring an event comes to Ball State University that is arguably the students' favorite school-sponsored activity: the Late Nite Carnival.
On Friday night, the festivities will attract hundreds of students to the commuter lot on the north end of campus, but for the rest of this week, setup for the event will drive students away from the area.
Students are not allowed to have their cars in the lot after 10 p.m. today, or they will be ticketed and maybe towed.
Hundreds of students who use the lot each day will be displaced. Without that lot, open spots for commuters are hard to come by around campus.
This is a problem the university faces every year, and it never seems to get any better.
Parking Services sent an e-mail to all students Monday morning letting them know about the lot closure. But that's all the e-mail said.
It did not say other parking areas would be temporarily available to the displaced commuters - it did not even offer any information about the other commuter lots already available on campus.
As it stands right now, commuters have to fend for themselves by scouring the remaining parking spaces, trying to find a lot close enough to campus to walk to class or relegating themselves to the stadium overflow lots and taking the shuttle.
As happens every year, dozens of extra students will likely be ticketed and towed during this time. Those students, who pay good money for commuter permits, deserve a better solution.
During football season, when students were unable to park in the stadium lot and were allowed to go to the commuter lots, the university faced a similar problem. A solution at that time was to let students park at the Delaware County Fairgrounds and take a free shuttle to campus.
This could be used again for the carnival. Another option would be to encourage students to use the stadium overflow lots and increase the frequency and number of Ball State shuttles.
In order to make the carnival accessible to a lot of students, it should be in a prominent area of campus like the north lot. But if students lose access to those spaces for a few days, there needs to be some viable alternative.
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