Parking and Transportation is a beat that deals with almost every single student that attends Kent State.  Everyone commutes, has a car on campus, rides the bus, rides a bike, or walks.  It is a beat that will definitely not have a shortage of stories.

I have already spoken to and met with a few of my contacts in the beat and plan to search for more.  I met with the manager at Parking Services, Larry Emling, who was very helpful with giving me story ideas.  He is willing to help in any way he can, and he also gave me another contact.

Joe Yensel currently works for Parta, but he has been around since the bussing service was called Campus Bus and did not receive the federal funding that Parta receives.  I believe that profiling him would make for a great story.

I also spoke with Frank Hairston who is the Marketing Director at Parta.  I plan to meet with him face to face very soon as he would be a good person to use for subjective sound.

I have plenty of story ideas in mind.  The main one that I will start with is the Summit Street Project story that has to deal with the construction on Summit Street that will start this summer.

The combination of the loss of parking spaces Parking Services will have to deal with as well as the changes in bus routes that Parta will have to make will provide a great story in my opinion.  That on top of students’ reaction to the construction and what they will have to deal with.

I have several other stories in mind that include Parking Services. Stories such as a story about the services they provide other than giving tickets that help students, projects they have planned for this summer to add more parking spaces, and ways to avoid getting parking tickets.

One story that I think would be interesting is  to find one of the unicycle riders on campus and do a profile on them. It would be a great human-interest story, especially since almost everyone on campus has seen them at one point or another.

I am also interested in doing a profile on Mr. Emling and his job as Manager at Parking Services.  I am sure that a lot of people do not know who he is and have no clue how crazy his job is or what it entails.

Overall, I think this will be a very fun beat to cover.  It is definitely something that I look forward to, as it will prepare me for the future.