by Rachel Barter ’27 on January 22, 2026
Opinion - Campus
For student drivers with sedans and other smaller vehicles, the student parking lots are a pothole nightmare. When I drive through student parking areas such as the Cunningham/Mal Brown Lot or the Schneider Lot, it has become increasingly bumpy, to say the least. Although I am from Maine and have driven through many dirt roads with extreme potholes, I have never driven through such an urban, highly trafficked parking lot that has had such a major issue with potholes. I acknowledge that these potholes have been exacerbated by the snow, rain, and plowing, but I have noticed this since the beginning of the fall 2025 semester, expecting them to be filled in; they were not.
With inclement weather on its way, I think it would be wise for the school to at least lightly fill in the potholes to prevent the parking lots from becoming more dangerous. As potholes fill with ice and snow, they leave cars at risk of sliding into other vehicles given the limited space in parking lots. Additionally, some students are not familiar with driving in snow or navigating a parking lot covered in ice-filled potholes. This makes me wonder: what has to happen before the college decides to fill the mass of potholes on this campus?
Considering that every student who has a parking pass pays either $400 for the year or $200 for the semester, I would think that we would not have to risk damage to our vehicles, and the college could fill in the potholes more than once a year to prevent them from ever reaching their current state. Therefore, given the amount that we pay, I would expect better parking and not for the student-designated parking lots to be poorly maintained in comparison to all of the other pristine lots on campus.