As the work continued, their advocacy took the form of a campaign called MSU Parking Advocates, which seeks to make parking on campus free from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. from Monday through Friday and improve safety for commuters traveling to Lot 89 — located south of the main campus on Farm Lane — through increased accessibility of CATA bus services and installing emergency phones.

The group’s demands were presented to the All-University Traffic and Transportation Committee (AUTTC), an advisory body to the MSU Chief of Police and Executive Director of the Department of Police and Public Safety. Following that meeting, which took place last week, they plan to work with the committee chair to formalize a proposal that could make its way into the AUTTC’s annual recommendations.

Second-year social work graduate student Corrine Keuning, who serves as the recruitment coordinator for MSU Parking Advocates, said the current parking situation was a “sore point” for advocates and the student body at large.

“It tends to evoke a pretty strong reaction when we talk to other people about issues parking on campus, and we felt like we could really make an impact by bringing to light some of the struggles that off-campus students face that might just not be well known in the campus community,” Keuning said.

Keuning, like her other three classmates involved in the campaign, all commute to campus on a regular basis. As a student who commutes to campus from Grand Rapids, Keuning said she has struggled with Lot 89, the sole parking lot that commuter students can purchase a permit for.

“It was extremely frustrating to pay for that parking permit and know that there was this huge obstacle to use that lot for evening classes,” she said.

The group has had grievances with how parking and transportation operate on campus in the evening due to many of the classes associated with their programs occurring at that time.

Those frustrations spawned their first recommendation to MSU: offer free parking on campus from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. to better accommodate commuter students. 

59% of MSU students live off campus, and data obtained by MSU Parking Advocates from the Registrar's Office indicates over 9,000 students are enrolled in evening classes that begin after 5 p.m.

Certain lots on campus offer free parking after 6 p.m. The group, using data from the Office of the Registrar, determined that the lots offering free evening parking were not easily accessible for students taking classes in the 15 buildings most commonly used for evening classes.

By making parking spaces free on campus in the evenings, Keuning said students would no longer have to rely on traveling a long distance from Lot 89 to their classes or spend money to park at a closer spot.

DPPS Director of Public Safety Bureau John Prush, in an AUTTC meeting last week where MSU Parking Advocates presented their recommendations, stressed caution with changing the operating hours of employee lots, which run from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. 

He said there have been issues with employees still needing parking spaces after 5 p.m. while non-employees begin to park before 6 p.m. 

“We've seen this in areas, especially around athletic venues, where we've had to change those hours through the years,” Prush said.

Due to varying situations with parking spaces on campus for employees, AUTTC Chair Daniel Barney suggested amending the recommendation to further study where free parking hours could be amended and implement adjustments “where appropriate.”

The second recommendation MSU Parking Advocates brought to the committee concerns a gap in bus transportation in the evening. The final cycle for CATA Bus route 32, which runs throughout campus and extends to Lot 89, is at about 7:15 p.m. — well before final evening classes end.

Sarah Cruz, a second-year social work graduate student and media relations coordinator for MSU Parking Advocates, said this arrangement means one of the only options she is left with is to walk back to Lot 89 after her class.

“You're having to walk a really long distance back in the pitch black dark,” Cruz said. “Especially if you’re by yourself, that definitely has some weight of fear, I feel, for women particularly.”

To address this safety concern, the group recommends MSU offer free CATA Lot Link services to anyone who holds a permit for Lot 89. The service, which runs from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m., transports students between Lots 80, 83, 89 and 91 for a charge of $0.60. 

Although not a high cost, Keuning said the charge still adds an additional cost to access the lot students already paid for, and those who chose to forego that charge and walk to Lot 89 may feel unsafe doing so.

In the many times Keuning has traveled the path from her class back to Lot 89, she said she has also noticed how isolated the route becomes after passing the MSU Surplus Store and Recycling Center.

“Once you get past that, the walk does become a little bit more isolated,” she said. “There's no buildings around. The sidewalk kind of veers off the road. There's a tunnel that you need to go down to.”

And in that isolated stretch between the building and Lot 89, there are no Green Emergency Phones, an issue which poses a serious safety risk, Keuning said. To solve this, the group is recommending the installation of two additional Green Emergency Phones between the intersection of Green Way and Farm Lane, where the last phone is located in the route to the commuter lot, and Lot 89.

Following last week’s AUTTC meeting, Cruz said the group met with Barney, the committee chair, who expressed interest in sponsoring a formalized proposal to the AUTTC. The finalized proposal will be voted on at its April meeting to determine if it will move forward as an official recommendation by the advisory committee.

As of now, Keuning said she isn’t sure if Barney is willing to sponsor the proposal as it is currently written, and hopes that adjustments won’t have to be made to their recommendations.

According to the AUTTC webpage, final recommendations will be reviewed by the past and succeeding committee chair with the Chief of Police and Executive Director for the Department of Police and Public Safety. 

“Any areas of need will be identified before the start of the upcoming academic year,” the AUTTC webpage states.