DePaul University is a wonderful institution. If it wasn’t, I really wouldn’t feel comfortable paying the exorbitant amount of money asked of me that affords a decent degree from a private institution. I don’t feel that the administration always administers the right decisions, but I think they do a remarkable job at making DePaul an effective institution of higher learning.

DePaul’s mission statement states, “As a university, DePaul pursues the preservation, enrichment, and transmission of knowledge and culture across a broad scope of academic disciplines.” Nobody can claim that the staff and faculty of DePaul have failed in this objective. Notably absent from this objective, however, is any mention of automotive parking.

If one follows the dismal and dull daily politics of Lincoln Park and Chicago’s 43rd and 32nd Wards, they would be familiar with a new proposal to make the stretch of Kenmore Avenue from Fullerton Parkway to Belden Avenue (read: one city block) into a “woonerf,” a driver friendly but pedestrian focused street.

This ridiculous word really isn’t that ridiculous of a proposal, as it would improve conditions for the variety of cigarette smoking hipster types outside of the Arts and Letters Hall as well as maintaining a traffic route for the aggressively impatient Lincoln Park yuppies that believe Kenmore to be a short cut around the almost hilariously dangerous intersection at Sheffield and Belden. So everyone is happy, right?

Wrong. Lincoln Park citizens have expressed their outrage in community meetings with Alderman Michele Smith (from the 43rd ward) and Alderman Scott Waugespack earlier this month. Smith even labeled the issue a number one concern, saying, “It’s probably a good time to look at the whole parking situation around DePaul”. To which I reply, yes. Let us look at parking at DePaul.

DePaul offers parking spaces at three different lots around the Lincoln Park campus for its student and faculty at reasonable rates, especially considering the average price of daily parking in Chicago. The stretch of Kenmore in consideration is not a DePaul parking lot, meaning that one requires no particular permit to park their vehicle there. The 47 spots that would be removed by the new construction proposal would be incorporated as free parking spots at the various DePaul lots on campus, meaning that nobody who currently mooches off of DePaul’s street parking would have to pay a dime to continue doing so.

This, however, isn’t enough for the kind and generous folks of Lincoln Park, who still claim that it isn’t enough for DePaul’s administration to accommodate their outrageous demands when considering the university’s responsibility to its customers/students.

If I could address the people of Lincoln Park directly, I would like to say this: DePaul University is one of the only good things about where you live. I understand that it may come across a little harshly, but you live in a district so detached from the culture and environment of the city around it that I can fully understand how you would lack the basic human compassion necessary to see how this benefits everyone.

The students who utilize the Lincoln Park campus contribute to the economic growth of every industry in the area, and yet they should be shunted in favor of free parking spaces? Where do you get off assuming that it is any of your business what DePaul offers as parking? Are you familiar with the sort of community service initiatives that DePaul undertakes every quarter to improve conditions all over the city? Do you know how many of our students and faculty utilize your businesses and real estate?

Without DePaul, the only thing that would draw any people to your neighborhood would be the zoo, which is free to the public, so that doesn’t really do you any good. Let DePaul be the outstanding educational institution that it is so that you can have something to be proud of, and drive your ridiculously unnecessary car the extra block to a parking garage.

This is the city of Chicago, after all. Why do you even have a car?