One of the pet peeves of residents of Frederiksen Court is that there is a lack of parking spaces. Because of their closeness to campus, the Frederiksen parking lots seem to be a haven for off-campus residents and commuters to park their cars in and jet off to class for a few hours. Frederiksen residents believe enough is enough and are demanding a crackdown on the illegal parkers.

This confusion is a result of poor planning by the Department of Residence, who told the residents before the completion of all of the apartments three years ago that there would be an adequate amount of parking spaces for everyone. This turned out not to be the case. There are about 3.7 parking spaces for each apartment. Therefore, off-campus parkers have forced the residents to park in visitor parking spaces — where residents get ticketed.

Each Frederiksen resident has a permit to park in his or her parking lot. Why not allow Frederiksen residents to use the visitor parking spaces instead of punishing them for a problem that is out of their hands? As long as the car parked in the visitor’s space has a permit signaling to the ticketer that the owner is a Frederiksen resident, the car’s owner should be excused.

Another way to help solve this issue requiring the Department of Public Safety to send its patrollers to all the lots, instead of specific lots at specific times. Residents have complained that DPS only tickets specific lots, such as the lots by the 50s, that have an extreme problem with overflow. As long as DPS tickets all lots periodically, it will help deter illegal parkers.

Some off-campus parkers may say the Frederiksen residents should just bear the brunt of their parking shortage since many off-campus apartment complexes don’t allow equal parking for each apartment. But there is often parking available on the street near their off-campus apartments.

While this is somewhat true for Frederiksen residents — who have been forced to park in overflow lots across Stange Road and 13th Street — they are unable to park on such busy roads.

Next year’s residents should take heed — talk to your representative from the Frederiksen Court Community Council, talk to residence department officials and speak with DPS officers to come to a consensus about the parking problem.

Or don’t bring a car to school — which will help reduce pollution to our community. There is also CyRide, which is easily available to Frederiksen residents every day of the week and can take them almost everywhere in Ames. Meanwhile, residents who do choose to not bring a car can also rely on their roommates. But Frederiksen residents need results soon, and it’s up to them, the residence department and DPS to solve the overflow problem.