When students returned to class at UTEP, parking problems immediately cropped up. Students said they had paid up to $350 for a parking permit for the semester only to discover that there were no parking spaces to be had. Students and faculty alike reported that they were having to drive around for up to an hour before maybe getting lucky and finding a parking space. When it was suggested that UTEP had oversold the spaces, university officials immediately said they had not and that construction had taken some parking spaces out of the loop, but it turns out construction isn't the only reason for the parking woes at UTEP.

The university replied to a open records requests by students and to a question from KTSM NewsChannel 9 and it turns out that there are 7,329 spaces on campus and a total of 11,179 permits were sold. I'm not too good at the maths, but with the help of my cell phone calculator I determined that there were 3,850 more permits sold than there are parking spaces.

UTEP can say all they want that they oversold because "..parking lots and garages frequently turn over throughout the day as students leave and arrive for classes", but the plain fact of the matter is that almost 4,000 more permits than parking spaces means a lot of people paid a lot of money to the university to park and there is no way they will ever be able to use those permits.

Fix this situation, UTEP. Stop overselling and stop being so secretive about the way you run the university that is run on public funds.

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