As a resident that lives in Sunwatcher Village, I sometimes find it difficult to find a parking space in the lot that is built into the apartment complexes. You might be wondering why. The answer is simple; that lot no longer has a gate like it did back in 2007 and students that have a resident parking pass are allowed to park there regardless of where they live. Yes, believe it or not, Sunwatcher Village used to have a gate, and as a resident, you needed a key to get into to parking lot. What happened to it? When students swiped their keys to get into the parking lot, other students tried to beat the gate before it came down resulting in broken gates on a weekly or monthly basis.

Like any other civilian, I wonder if there was any form of punishment that the school implemented on the students that would break the gate. Unfortunately, it was rare when the students would get caught by campus police or be reported by someone that witnessed the incident.

What about cameras? The school didn’t have the high-quality cameras that we do now, so if the perpetrator was to be recorded during the act the image quality would be too blurry to distinguish their plate numbers. Maybe you have some lingering questions that need to be answered and I leave you with this last one.

What would happen to the students who park at Sunwatcher Village and do not live there? If the school was to bring back a similar gate system to Sunwatcher Village then the school would have to accommodate the students more parking lots to make up for the loss of the Sunwatcher Village lot that is currently utilized by everyone. As a current student, I would like to bring back the gate system for future students to utilize if we could get past all of the “buts” and “what if’s.”