Less Green, Please

What is up with Drury and its need to make driving/parking a little bit harder with each passing year?  My freshman year driving was just fine; there were plenty of places to park, and getting around was relatively simple.  Then, during my sophomore year, they closed off one of the roads to make way for construction of the O’Reilly Event Center.  Suddenly it was a little more difficult to get to my parking space.  But it was just a minor annoyance and I didn’t think too much of it.  But now this year, my junior year, another avenue has been closed off.  Drury decided the best thing they could possibly do with the empty lot where Turner and Belle halls once stood was make it an empty lot with grass on top instead of creating more parking spaces to make way for the huge load of incoming freshmen.  Not only that, but one of the lanes into Freeman lot has been closed off, effectively bottlenecking the only way in or out of that parking lot.  I discovered this to my ire while driving to my on-campus summer job, and having to turn around in Drury Lane and go around campus to get a parking space.

Are you kidding me?  Why is this such a difficult concept to comprehend: that a campus should be easily navigable?  Not to mention that Drury actually cut down available parking spaces when they closed off Freeman’s entrance (at least twelve).  It also doesn’t help that so far all the new green space has done is just sit there, looking green.  Now, I know, people weren’t allowed on it for a while because the grass was growing, and now it’s all cold and stuff, but you know what?  You know those benches they built for students to sit on?  The ones that have been available to the public since day one?  Never used.  I walk by that space at least four times a day going to and from classes, and I’ve never once seen someone using the benches.  I even had to shoot a story on the green space for DUTV, and I was out there for a full fifteen minutes before someone even walked through the space so I could interview them.  What a waste. 

I can’t help but feel this is nothing but a ploy for Drury to snag another sustainability award.  We won it last year for doing things that actually help, like removing trays from the Commons to reduce the amount of dishwashing, or the slow phasing-out of trash cans with recycling bins.  But this just feels pointless.  So what if we have another field?  How is that helping?  It may make campus look prettier, but, so?  It’s not making campus sustainable, it’s only making it look sustainable.  It’s not the same.