A Cold Inconvenience

The Administration's recently announced decision to construct a parking lot in front of Lowell House for motorcycles, motorscooters, and motorbikes seems like an ill-conceived policy rather than a sensible plan that considers student welfare.

The present program bans night parking of those vehicles in the area of the old House Squash Courts to lessen the noise near Kirkland, Winthrop and Eliot. As a compensation, the new lot, parking in which will cost a nominal fee, is to be built.

This narrow parking space is little better than its predecessor. The noise of the motorcycles will disturb almost as many students as before. Leverett and Lowell House rather than Kirkland, Winthrop and Eliot will suffer now. At least the lot could have been placed a little further away from Lowell up Plympton Street. A parking lot several walking minutes from the latter houses makes it almost absurd for a student there to own a motorcycle, presumably purchased for use on short trips.

Strangely, the parking ban suggests that somehow the scooters parked on Mill Street between Mather and McKinlock do not disturb the peaceful silence of the evening. Present plans do not, but should, correct the annoying scooter noise in this area.

A more realistic solution would be to forbid latecomers from parking near Mill Street or the House Squash Courts. Only scooters that return or leave between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m. should have to use the new lot. Scooter owners who park their machines earlier in the evening could then be spared a cold, inconvenient walk home.