I am not a fan of Third District Ald. Mike D’Amato by any means. For the most part, I find him to be typical of the out-of-touch, white-collar Democrats who are ruining this city. With that said, the Residential Preferred Parking issue is one of the few things I am able to agree with him on.

For too long, UWM has been overrun by students from suburbs and small towns who want nothing more than to make Milwaukee — the Upper East Side in particular — into their own personal playground. In other words, they want to live in Milwaukee only as long as they can keep the things they’re accustom to, no matter how impractical they are for living in a major city. Especially in neighborhoods as crowded as the ones that surround UWM.

This is why I applaud D’Amato for trying to make it more difficult for students to own and use cars while they’re here. It’s the same old story with them: Somehow, our university is good enough for them to get their degree from, and yet our neighborhoods aren’t good enough for them to live in (most UWM students are too scared to live anywhere but the Upper East Side) and our public transit isn’t good enough for them to use even after the university makes it so that they can ride for free?

If they want to have the advantages of living in the city, they can take the disadvantages as well, including not always being able to count on having access to your own ride (Milwaukee has the smallest number of residents who own cars in Wisconsin, per capita).

Hopefully, the RPP will help filter out many of those who fit the descriptions above, eventually giving UWM a student body made up of more people who genuinely want to be here. I’m tired of going to school with people who are only here to impress their friends and families by pretending to live in “the big city.”

Nick D. Waldron

UWM student and Milwaukee native

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