Sanity at UAF

FINALLY! Somebody who's thinking with his brain! Brian Rogers, Interim Chancellor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, has revised the stupid parking policy on campus. This announcement just came out from the chancellor himself:

As you all know, UAF has a wide variety of community events beyond the classes we teach. We have lectures, ball games, music and movies and we want the Fairbanks and Alaska communities we serve to feel welcome and a part of what we are doing.

Many people are telling me that parking is getting in the way of UAF’s campus being an inviting destination for people who live here. Not knowing where to park, having to pay for parking and getting parking tickets make UAF a lot less welcoming and a whole lot harder to visit again.

I want to change that. I want Fairbanks community members to feel welcome when they visit UAF. I want UAF to be a place people want to come back to after a visit. So today, at the Greater Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce meeting, I am announcing one small step in moving UAF and Fairbanks closer together: free visitor parking.

There will be free visitor parking in the Taku and Nenana visitor parking lots on UAF’s campus starting with the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, Sunday, July 13 and continuing through the summer. Shuttle bus service to all campus locations will be available from those two lots.

At last! I'd say Rogers has a bright future at UAF if he keeps this kind of thing up. Let's hope this is extended indefinitely--there are a lot of events in the wintertime, too, and it is incredibly obnoxious to try to come to campus for some speaker or festival or movie when you know you have to deal with the parking Nazis and their byzantine policies and stupid machines.

Such a breath of fresh air! Rogers will do more good for the university with this one move than a ton of feel-good glossy full-color flyers ever did cluttering up my mailbox.