Basic Story 3 By Ricardo Barge

Texas State University announced that it marks its 16th consecutive year that student enrollment has increased from the previous year.

 Texas State University has a record-setting enrollment of 35,568 students for the 2013 fall semester; this is an increase from 34,225 students that attended the 2012 fall semester. Ashley Jeffries, music major at Texas State University, says this is in part due to “especially since we have the biggest freshman class this year." With the increase of students, the impact it has is positive and negative. Prestige for the university increases with the enrollment increase, but what about the space available for those students to park?

Parking at Texas State University has always been a problem according to 25-year-old music major, Mitch Quintanilla.

“I started in 2006 and left for a few years. Parking has always sucked,” he said.

With parking being a problem over the years, the overall growth of the university will increase that problem, unless the proper plans are in place to accommodate with the growth. Transfer student from San Antonio Shanna Bradford who has only been here one semester even understands that.

“If it continues to grow at that rate there definitely need to be expansion plans already in place so there's not that congestion problem with traffic," she said.

With the increase of enrollment there is also an effect to the parking at local establishments outside of campus. Senior Kelsey Kotzur notices the parking shortage around town.

“Now the streets are packed all the time, a ridiculous amount of traffic. I can’t ever find a parking spot at HEB,” she said.

 With the planning for more parking comes construction of parking garages. San Marcos already has construction happening all over town due to population increase, which increases traffic all around town. Texas State University student Sydney Afflitto lives with the traffic every day, but believes parking garages still need to be built.

“I mean it's a pain, especially with driving and stuff, but I think that parking is definitely an issue. In order to create more parking, there has to be construction,” she said.