Derrick Huggins, director of Vehicle Management and Parking Services, said 50 parking spaces were relocated for faculty and staff to a parking lot near the Coliseum.
"Parking was taken away midyear, and during midyear you have a graduation period so some spaces do become available for the spring semester," Huggins said.
Huggins said the Ringling Bros. Circus over the weekend caused students to feel the crunch even more, but since the circus has vacated the property "students should be able to find a parking space."
When asked about the specific number of spaces sold this semester, Huggins wasn't sure of the figure and asked to be emailed questions pertaining to specific data. At the time of publication, which was about 12 hours after the initial email was sent and eight hours after an additional email had been sent, Huggins had not yet responded.
Hospitality Retail and Sports Management Dean Brian Mihalik said the first couple of weeks of class were a zoo because students were paying their bursar's bills. Dean Charles Bierbauer of the College of Mass Communication and Information Studies also said that the use of the upstairs of the Coliseum for the bursar's office to collect student fees during the first week of class caused confusion of students and faculty, but that it has since been alleviated.
Mihalik suggested that because of the parking situation, students should be able to make their fee payments at another location until the new Darla Moore School of Business is complete. Mihalik added that a parking attendant was brought in to help the situation and that Huggins was helpful in trying to make up for the space that was lost because of both the business school construction and bursar payments.
"We're running out of free spaces," Mihalik said. "And an urban campus, if you've ever looked at other urban campuses, we're sort of fortunate that we still have free parking on a flat street surface because if we were in some other cities we'd be paying a heck of a lot more, so in some ways we're happy that we still have some of it."
The parking confusion due to construction on the new business school foreshadows the parking dilemma that the university will have to handle when students, faculty and staff from the Darla Moore School of Business transition to the space beside the Coliseum.
"Thirty years from now you won't recognize this part of campus. This will be the heart of USC; this is where the growth is going to come," Mihalik said.
Bierbauer also said that parking isn't going to get better.
"However many faculty they have up there and thousands of students are going to shift this way," Bierbauer said, referring to the population of the current business school.
"I think we've gotten through a couple weeks of crush and overlapping of students and faculty and have somewhat resolved the matter now," Bierbauer said and added that he hadn't heard any complaints this week and that faculty have been reasonably pleased that parking had compensated space for them."