Flashes of Panic

It’s been a long time since I posted about the Bird Sanctuary Parking Lot, but I guess it’s been a long time since I had anything to post. Today I got this update through the email list:

[The president] made an announcement concerning our efforts at the Commencement faculty meeting. The college will be converting the upper tennis courts to a temporary parking lot and halting any immediate plans for the creation of a lot in the existing Bird Sanctuary.

The email goes on to confirm my opinion that “this is very good news, but it is by no means a victory,” and urges continued efforts towards “a sustainable solution to parking at the college.” (For one, I doubt the athletic director is pleased with this news.)

One thing I observed this spring, while I was busy being disappointed that they couldn’t get some kind of commitment from the students, was a truly remarkable number of cars regularly parked above the softball field (far side of the track) for intramural softball games. Do you want to really make a difference in the number of cars students feel they need on campus? Talk to the ones that feel they need to drive to the softball field. It’s not a big campus, folks. My walk from the apartment to the pool this winter was longer than most possible dorm-to-softball walks.

I wonder if there are some opposing mind-sets on campus. On one side, the environmentally-minded long-term thinkers (like myself, except I’m neither a student nor on campus.) They recognize the way our national love affair with (and enslavement to) our vehicles is creating a future resources problem and how parking on campus is but one manifestation of this future problem. The opposed mind-set is more pragmatic. I don’t empathize, so I can only try: at best, what good is it doing for me to give up my car when nobody else is. At worst, I’m going to drive my SUV around as much as possible so those tree-hugging weenies can see how much I care about them and their precious causes.

To date, I’ve only heard the, er, tree-hugging weenies. (I’ve met some of them. Many are runners. I like them. Not just because they’re runners, I promise.) I haven’t heard or read anything from the others; in fact, as near as I can tell, they aren’t saying anything.

They’re just driving SUVs to the other side of a relatively small campus for an intramural softball game.

Until we—me and the other tree-hugging weenies—can convince the others that this is a real problem which requires a concerted solution—heck, until we can reach them and get them to engage the idea that there’s a problem—there will be no sustainable solution.

Until then I’m just one more snowflake on the less-driving snowball, hoping eventually we’ll have enough for an avalanche.

Now playing: The Day I Let Glory Steer from This Town Is Wrong by Nerissa & Katryna Nields