Wasseem Abugosh
Eng 352—Section 003
23 November 2008
New Student Parking Deck Proposal Critique
Last year Mona Patel, an NJIT student, was fed up with the parking situation. She noticed that it was incredibly hard to find parking spots during the afternoon hours and that resulted in some problems. Her solution was to build a parking deck that could hold about 100 cars per floor with six floors. Her Proposal set out to describe how bad the current situation is, provide a solution, and analyze the costs and benefits of the solution.
In the Introduction and Background, Patel set out to give the reader the scenario. Approximately 3700 students, which are 70% of the student body, commute to and from school. Frankly, there are too many students parking in the current parking facilities. Students who can not find a parking spot and who paid for a parking tag must spend a significant amount of time looking for a spot to park. When they find out that there is no spot within NJIT’s parking facilities, they are forced to park next to a meter or in an unsafe area. As a result, the local streets near the parking facilities are being congested with traffic, students who can’t find a spot are being late to their classes, and students are generally are becoming unhappy. In addition, some students are finding that purchasing a parking spot is a waste of money. If they stop buying parking tags every semester, the University loses in revenue. This is leading to the fact that NJIT’s parking facilities can’t hold all of the commuters and to make matters worse, there is a projected increase of incoming commuter students (Patel 5).
According to
Patel, the solution to this problem is to build a new parking facility at the
current location of lot 10. This deck would be able to hold 600 cars. The
students who weren’t able to find parking spots before would definitely be able
to find one with the addition of a parking deck. As a result, there would be
more parking spots at peak hours, less traffic on
Patel doesn’t just suggest a solution without backing it up with numbers. She gives a cost/benefit analysis that puts her idea in perspective. Construction costs around $6 million and maintenance is around $500,000/year. However, if the University increased the cost of parking by $50, profits would increase by over $370,000. Taking into account that resident students buy spaces and there will be an increase in students willing to buy spaces, revenues will increase. Therefore, the university would gain back the money they invested in about 14 years and would continue to make a large profit in the future years. Patel concludes that building a new parking deck is an investment worth taking and it would make the lives of commuting students much easier (Patel 8).
The goal of the proposal is to get the Student Senate to buy into the idea of building a new parking deck so they could create a presentation and convince the administration to take in the investment. The target of the proposal is the Student Senate. The intention of the proposal is for the Senate to take it into consideration and “propose the idea to the University President” (Patel 10). This proposal should target directly the University President because it is he whose opinion matters most; the University President is the one who will provide the funding for construction of the parking deck. Patel also used some of the aspects of MIMES and TRIBES to create her package. Regarding MIMES, the first three letters were represented. Her Message was quite clear that the parking situation now is a problem and the solution is to build a new parking deck. The Intent of the package is to convince the target, the Student Senate, that the University should spend the money needed to build a new Parking Deck. The Means of the package is through a proposal. More specifically, the resources and methods of delivery would be through explanation of the problem regarding the lack of parking space, providing a solution and its effects on the University, and giving a cost/benefit analysis. Regarding TRIBES, the first three letters were represented in creating the package. The target audience is the members of the Student Senate. The relationship between her and the Student Senate is one of professionalism; she is looking for them to help her cause. This is why the package must be very formal; she doesn’t have a close relationship with her target. Therefore, the form of her package is a proposal and not an email. Patel has no influence over her target audience. She is, most likely, an average student who has no power or authority to sway the audience. She has to impress the Student Senate with her proposal; that is the only means of convincing her target to buy into her cause. The most important part of the package that will influence the target is cost/benefit analysis. She constantly repeats why building a parking deck would solve her problem, but the cost/benefit analysis gives the numbers to justify her solution. The table on page 9 also plays a big role because that is more of a simple visual representation of a cost/benefit analysis that is easy to read and decipher.
There were a few points within the proposal I would change. Regarding the format, she has three sections (Executive Summary, Introduction, and Background) in which she constantly repeats the problem of not having enough parking spaces and gives her suggested solution of creating a new parking deck. I was reading the same idea over and over again; it was fustrating. I would have gotten rid of the Executive Summary and Introduction and began the Proposal with the Background Section. The Background section was well written and displays key facts giving the reader a good idea as to how significant this problem is. For example, stating that 70% of the undergraduate students are commuters is implying that a major portion of the undergraduate student body is affected. I felt as if the proposal could have had more facts, graphs, or visual representations. For example, a line graph that plots the parking spaces available on an hourly basis from Monday to Friday would clearly show how tough it is to find parking spots at different times during the days of the week. Also, a survey asking students and professors questions regarding the parking situation would also be a great way to show the Student Senate how the commuting students feel. The only reason why I am in favor of building a new parking facility is because I know the feeling of not finding a parking spot. However, Patel can not bank on the fact that everybody on the Student Senate and the heads of the Administration know that feeling. This is graphs and facts are more important than assumptions, especially if it is regarding a multi-million project like building a new parking deck. In terms of format, there was too much empty white space that made it seem less presentable. The table of contents displayed all the wrong pages for each topic.
There are some parts
of the Proposal that I was pleased to see. On page 6, Patel put a map showing
the locations of the parking facilities within the NJIT campus. This visual is
very helpful describing the heavy traffic by students coming out from
Overall, I think the Student Senate would say yes to the proposal because she approaches the problem through the perspective of the common NJIT commuter. All commuting students and faculty members will say that finding a parking spot is an inconvenience. This will catch the attention of the members of the Student Senate because their job is to serve the students. Also, based of her claim, NJIT will make a profit out of building a parking deck. This will surely close the deal and convince the Student Senate that building a Parking Deck is a good idea.