Winthrop students are familiar with a lack of convenient parking close to their residence halls. Many students feel that the school should invest in better parking accommodations for students that must walk a significant distance from the Legion parking lot back to the central campus. However, because of the strain that the COVID-19 pandemic has placed on Winthrop’s budget, coupled with the revision of Winthrop’s master plan, it seems unlikely that the university will expand student parking in the foreseeable future.
Some students believe that a parking garage should be built in the Legion lot and others think that staff spots should be given to students. Danny Kilgore-Wilson is a sophomore social studies education major at Winthrop and believes that the university should be doing more to accommodate students’ parking needs.
“I don’t feel as if Legion is best fit for safety concerns. Parking across the street where any Rock Hill citizens can come and go freely is not safe for students who pay for parking on campus. It can give aim to violence and stalking, being that many Rock Hill residents can roam around that area while you’re trying to get to campus,” Wilson said. “I also feel that the university should not have faculty and staff parking in front of residence halls. It is inappropriate if you ask me. Faculty and staff should not be that close to my place of residence. If a problem were to ever arise, they would know where I live.”
COVID-19 has affected all higher education institutions, some more than others. Winthrop has been able to weather the storm but has had to make tough decisions to keep the university afloat. Most notably, in January, the school sold off its last off-campus property, the Coke building on Cherry Road, to Lancaster Land LLC. According to Winthrop.edu, the university also “instituted 10% operational budget cuts, a hiring freeze and furloughs this year.”
Winthrop’s operating budget is annually revised and approved by the board of trustees who decide budget objectives and where to cut spending. The pandemic has thrown a wrench into Winthrop’s master plan for expansion and has forced administration officials to scratch their heads about what to do next.
The master plan is a list of goals and objectives designed to be accomplished over the next ten years, set forward by the president of the university and board of trustees. Winthrop’s current master plan has been revised by President Hynd who has directed his staff to begin working on a new 3-5 year plan for Winthrop that aims at the “beautification of Winthrop.”
It is unknown if this will include a plan to rethink student parking at Winthrop, but because of the pandemic’s effect on the school’s ability to collect tuition and housing fees, it seems unlikely.
“80% of Winthrop revenue comes from tuition and student fees… there is a decreased undergraduate enrollment of 5% and pandemic expenses have impacted the school’s bottom line. Additional impacts to the university’s budget have occurred from Fall 2020 housing occupancy, which is 63%, down from 91% in Fall 2019,” according to Winthrop.edu.
Assistant Chief Yearta of the Winthrop University Police Department says that state funding for the University has declined since the recession of 2008 and that the university’s primary concern is the upkeep of existing parking.
“Right now the focus is on maintaining the current parking lots we have and actually doing some repairs on them and some regular maintenance that needs to be done,” Yearta said. “Whenever we go through a redone campus master plan, there is always the potential for the addition, or changes to parking and because we’re in the initial stages of that, I have no idea where that’s going to go. So right now, the answer would be, ‘not in the near future.’”
COVID-19 has affected almost every aspect of campus life, including the future of parking at Winthrop. If the university plans to address students’ concerns about parking they will have to include it in their master plan and begin to think about raising the costs of parking passes. Hynd and other administration officials will likely continue to focus on other areas that need improvement for the time being.
Photo by Kaily Paddie
