“There’s no parking around Tech anymore” says Nathan Gregory as he stood observing his truck parked on the front sidewalk of the Volpe Library.
Gregory, a sophomore business major from Gallatin, TN, was the leader of a small scale parking protest held on Friday, Aug. 30 on Tech’s campus. Gregory along with a few friends drove his white Toyota Tacoma just in front of the steps around 11 am.
The inspiration for the 1 hour 45 minute event was formed on the popular Facebook page Tennessee Tech Confessions. “[Gregory] posted a status on Tech Confessions saying that if he got over 150 likes he would park over here on Friday. 300 likes later here he is” said Tech Confessions co-editor, Thomas Debow III.
“I don’t think it will change anything but I do think it might bring awareness to how bad the parking is,” said Gregory, “I got to my class twenty minutes early the other day and couldn’t find a parking spot.”
On Tech Confessions any Facebook user can follow an off-site link to a page where they can write whatever they feel about the university or college life in general anonymously. Once the editors of the page receive the confessions, they post them in numbered posts on the Facebook page.
Although Tech Confessions isn’t officially affiliated with the university in anyway, it has quite the following. According to page founder and editor Bryan Bowen “[Tech] Confessions started close to a year ago and already has more likes [on Facebook] than [TTU] Memes, and more than The Oracle.”
“It grew really quickly” says Bowen. The page currently has over 4400 people connected to it.
Students, alumni, and even the occasional professor respond to the posts. Responses include exclamations of opinion to the original post as well as attempts at witty rebuttals to the confession . Debow says “Blame me for all the arguments and mishaps”
