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The Twitter experiment was inspired by the UMD Statesman's story about Elizabeth Church-Davison's (pictured) struggle finding a disabled-parking spot on campus.

At peak hour, disabled-parking spots mostly filled

Out of 58 spots, only 7 were open at 10 a.m. on Thursday

By: Eric Ludy

Posted: 2/18/09

After reading the Statesman's story about Elizabeth Church-Davison's struggle finding a disabled-parking spot, UMD Journalism students decided to find out for themselves just how many spots were available around campus.

Using Twitter, a social networking tool, they took an inventory of all 58 disabled-parking spots on campus at 10 a.m. on Thursday. They found that only 7 were vacant, and of those only one was centrally located at the Weber Music Hall parking lot. The others were at outlying areas of campus like the Health Services building and the Sports and Health Center.

Asked about the student's findings, Cheryl Love with UMD's Department of Parking Services said that while she sympathizes with people not able to find spots, the university has no control over who parks where. The fact that there is no regulation over who comes on and off campus means that there is no way to ensure a spot for anyone, she said.

"We can't guarantee that anyone will have a spot closest to where they want to be," she said.

To view the UMD Journalism student's posts to Twitter, click here.

Keep checking umdstatesman.com for further updates on this story.