UCI Students Root Out ‘Black Gold’ Clues : Contest Winner to Have Parking Spot for 1 Year

An unusual contest is in progress at UC Irvine. The winner on Oct. 10 gets a prize that students have dubbed “black gold,” and because such a prize is highly coveted, interest in the contest is reportedly intense.

Black gold in this case isn’t oil. It’s a slab of black asphalt. More specifically, it’s a reserved parking space on campus for the entire 1986-87 school year.

“People would die for something like that,” said Linda Granell, UCI’s director of public information.

“Oh, yes, there’s a lot of interest,” said Barbara Van Hoven, student publications director. It was her office that dreamed up the Zot-a-Thon-o-Rama contest, which involves a search for 24 “clues” on campus. Students learn where to look for the clues by reading a student handbook.

Device to Get Handbook Read

Van Hoven acknowledged that the goal was to get students to read the handbook. She said throwing in the black gold really worked. “You’ll see students all over the campus taking down clues from the 24 sites,” she said. The 24 clues, she said, lead to a conclusion, and any person who correctly writes down the right answer and submits it to her office is eligible for the Oct. 10 drawing.

Both students and faculty members, in interviews on Tuesday, said the black-gold rush underscores the serious parking problem on the campus.

David Sheldon, acting vice chancellor for administrative and business services, said Tuesday that increased enrollment and an increase in the number of visitors have compounded the campus’sparking problem.

“We have about 10,500 parking spaces, and we estimate that about 25,000 vehicles a day come on the campus,” Sheldon said. There are thus twice as many cars coming into the Irvine campus than there are places to park them on a daily basis. “It’s especially bad in the early mornings,” Sheldon said. “But I would say the situation is not incapacitating. It’s more an aggravation.”

A student government leader, however, had a more apocalyptic summation of the parking problem. “It’s a parking disaster, not a parking problem,” said Todd Dickey, vice president for administrative services of UCI’s Associated Students.

Dickey, 21, a political science major from Vista, said Tuesday morning that he had driven around for 20 minutes trying to find a place to park. “Parking has always been bad, but this year is the worst,” he said. “Students are apathetic about many things, but not about this issue. They come into my office all the time, asking that something be done.”

Dickey said he would ask the Student Council on Tuesday night to name a special student commissioner to monitor the campus parking problem. The UCI Faculty Senate already has a committee on the problem.

Sheldon said one solution may be in building a proposed high-rise parking structure. Financing, however, is a sticking point, he said. He noted that the state requires university campuses to finance their own parking facilities, and parking revenues on campus, from permits, meters and so forth, were less than expected last year. So there is a question about whether the campus can afford to build two long-discussed high-rise parking structures.

Student Government Leery

Dickey said student government is somewhat leery of the proposed parking structures at any rate “because students will have to pay for them and they may cost us too much.” Dickey said the Student Council will be looking into the feasibility of “shuttle parking,” in which students and faculty would park at remote sites on the sprawling campus and be shuttled in to the campus buildings. Dickey said he thinks such a solution would be less expensive to students.

In the meantime, two related sociological events were very evident at UCI on Tuesday. One was the number of tired-looking student and faculty drivers making seemingly endless circles of the campus, looking for a place to park.

The other was the curious mix of students frantically reading the student handbook and looking for the 24 clues on campus that would result in a year’s possession of that precious black gold.