If you're going to try to sell a product on the open market, you ought to figure out exactly who your buyers are. In the wake of the administration's recent decision to ban sophomore parking on campus, it seems that Tufts officials may not have done their homework.
They started out on the right track. Director of Public and Environmental Safety John King explained that the ban was the product of the administration's "need to find a way to increase parking or reduce demand" in light of the perennial parking shortage on campus.
That certainly seems reasonable. But is reducing the number of eligible drivers on campus really going to satisfy the demands of the student body?
Think about it: If all three classes - sophomores, juniors and seniors - exhibited an equal demand for on-campus parking, the administration's decision to disqualify one-third of them in order to shrink the pool of unhappy drivers would make sense. The problem is that it's not really certain that those three factions do have an equal desire to park on the Hill; in fact, the custom wherein juniors and seniors living off-campus offer to illegally purchase upperclassmen parking passes on behalf of their sophomore acquaintances would indicate that they don't.
Wouldn't it make more sense, then, to tailor the parking eligibility requirements to the needs of the student body? The sophomore parking ban is attractive as a solution to the parking shortage because it is both simple and economical. However, it would be more prudent to make such a decision with the help of student input - a Web-based survey, for instance, would be a simple and economical way to better understand which students bring their cars with them to school each semester and, of these, which most need to park those cars in campus lots.
From there, the administration could adjust their parking policy accordingly: If it turns out that sophomores exhibit a much greater demand for on-campus parking - as may very well be the case - then the administration could consider offering a student parking pass that would be available to sophomores, juniors and seniors for the same fee, and student drivers could purchase the pass according to their needs. Of course, if a survey of the student body revealed that on-campus parking really is the object of only upperclassmen's desires, then they could carry out their current plan confident in the knowledge that it will best serve the student body. The administration may also want to consider capping the number of parking passes they distribute each semester to reduce day-to-day competition for spots.
Either way, it would be nice to know exactly what the parameters of the problem are before the administration forges ahead and implements a solution that may or may not be best suited to solve it. An arbitrary parking policy could lead to another year of parking headaches and could require this same debate to take place again in the
spring of 2009.
Consumers are not expected to invest in a product without having a good idea ahead of time whether or not that product will be able to effectively serve their needs. Why should drivers on this campus be treated any differently?
