The objective of this petition is to allocate parking spaces in Lot 480 exclusively to students of the Florida State University College of Medicine. We believe that designating Lot 480 as medical student parking would facilitate travel between on-/off- campus obligations, provide increased accessibility for satellite students returning for exams and meetings and provide a safer parking alternative for students studying late into the evening.

Lot 480 is located in between Stadium Drive and the "Spirit Way Garage" (or as many of us call it the King building parking garage). It contains 200 parking spots and includes slots for both handicapped parking and alternative fuel vehicles. Lot 480 is currently available for general student body use and is also accessible to vehicles with registered faculty decals. Our proposal would limit the access to students who are currently enrolled in the FSU College of Medicine.

Being located at the main campus allows the College of Medicine to be easily accessible to undergraduate students. In fact, the College of Medicine is very involved in undergraduate pre-medical affairs and is the site of pre-medical advising, undergraduate research and various pre-health RSO meetings. Although the location of the school is convenient to the pre-health student population, this flow of undergraduate students increases and concentrates the competition for parking near the College of Medicine (specifically at the "Spirit Way Garage" and Lot 480). Moreover, medical students often have mandatory and elective off-campus obligations. Having to return to the College of Medicine at high volume times requires increased time spent searching for parking, which may hinder arriving to class/events on time. Often, students with limited time in between commitments are forced to park illegally and risk being fined or having their vehicles towed. The difficulty for professional students to find parking has been regarded by other colleges, such as the FSU School of Law, and has been alleviated by designating a specific parking lot for the exclusive use of law students. There are currently 240 medical students that have class on the Tallahassee campus. Allocating the 200 spaces in Lot 480 would significantly alleviate the time and stress associated with parking near the College of Medicine.

Additionally, the College of Medicine curriculum requires third and fourth year medical students to attend clinical rotations at one of seven satellite campus throughout the state of Florida. Often times, exams and meetings require these students to return to the Tallahassee campus. This further increases the competition to find parking in the Spirit Way Garage and Lot 480. Having a designated lot for medical students would increase accessibility for returning medical students and alleviate the added competition to find parking for first and second year students at the Tallahassee campus.

Finally, as medical students we have 24-hour access to the College of Medicine and because of the demands of medical school; many students remain on campus late into the evening. Currently the best parking option for students is the Spirit Way Garage, which may put them at risk when returning to their vehicles in the evening or early morning hours. Lot 480 is located near Stadium Drive, which provides for greater visibility of students walking to their cars as compared to the Spirit Way Garage. Designating Lot 480 as a medical student parking lot would provide a safer option for students that study late on campus.

For the reasons mentioned above, we propose that Lot 480 be assigned as parking for the exclusive use of students at the Florida State University College of Medicine. We propose that this be implemented through a decal system that requires any parked vehicle to display a College of Medicine student decal. We also propose that this be enforced by a ticketing system such that vehicles parked in this lot without the appropriate decal are fined. Moreover, we understand that this lot would adhere to home game day parking regulations.