If you want to talk parking issues with a South Dakota State student, be prepared for a heated rant about being late to class after circling for 20 minutes to find a spot.

This year, construction has taken its toll on Brookings.

First with Sixth Street construction and now campus is under the frustrating cloud of year-long construction projects impacting parking.

With Wellness Center and Performing Arts Center (PAC) expansions, there are hundreds fewer parking spots for commuters this year, which adds complications to the already hectic game-day parking during football season.

But with the extended planning that goes into construction projects, we, at The Collegian, feel more planning could have gone into accommodating commuter and visitor parking for daily life and large events.

Thankfully, we’ll have 400 more spots next year when the intramural fields are paved.

But with the Frost Arena commuter parking lot closing at some point this semester, we will be down a commuter lot when construction begins.

As for game day, tailgating takes over four separate areas — three of which are in paved parking lots — when instead cars could be parking there, considering they are paved parking lots.

Tailgating being so widespread adds unnecessary strain to parking near the stadium for visitors, and is a contributing factor to the need for students to relocate their cars from rows A-D in the Southeast Lot.

While construction always creates headaches, our editorial board felt the adjustments Parking Services has been forced to make show a continued lack of planning and consideration for parking on campus.

As the university has grown, new buildings have been built and expanded and the Jacks compete in a new, larger stadium.

While some new lots came with the new stadium, they are not close enough to the stadium to accommodate the 19,000 people that could be in attendance on game day.

When you create a new stadium with the hopes of bringing in thousands, shouldn’t you consider where those thousands will park?

We, at The Collegian, hope to see more planning and consideration for parking in the future as new construction projects begin.

We hope to see better organization of things like tailgating to prevent unnecessary hindrances to already difficult parking situations.

Tailgating needs to be adjusted to better accommodate game-day parking during construction projects.

The Collegian staff meets weekly and agrees on the issue of the editorial.The editorial represents the opinion of The Collegian.