Adam Capotorto
Staff Writer
You’re running late for class and you’re desperately searching for parking but every single spot is taken.
You finally find parking but it’s behind the library, or even worse, in the Gwendolyn lot.
Your class is in Stroud Hall.
You park and start to make your long walk that adds another 10 minutes to your tardiness.
You finally finish all your classes, you walk over to your car, and on the windshield is a nice $25 parking ticket because your permit wasn’t “clearly displayed.”
This scenario is all too real for just about anyone that has a car on campus, and quite honestly, it shouldn’t be.
ESU is already racking up millions from our tuition, books, fees, housing, etc. Ticketing students is just another way to make money. My freshman year at ESU a parking ticket was only $15, since then they decided to up it to $25 for no good reason.
If we pay to go to a university, why is it that we have to pay for parking? It doesn’t make any sense.
I understand issuing tickets for parking in places that aren’t actually parking spots, but what’s the deal with ticketing people for not having their permit displayed or parking in a different lot?
When we apply for a permit we have to put our cars’ information in the system, so if a permit is not displayed, why can’t they run a quick search on a car?
And if that takes too long to do why can’t they issue the ticket and then revoke it once the student comes to explain that they did purchase a parking pass but didn’t have it displayed?
There’s no need to charge the students so much for such small infractions. It’s just absurd.
I wouldn’t mind dealing with the crazy fines and rules if the students at ESU got good parking spots.
Every day I drive into campus I pass the faculty lots and can’t help but notice how many spots inside them are empty and just how close they are to the main buildings of the university.
I understand that the faculty and staff of ESU are just as important as anyone else but they don’t live in the dorms, they don’t have to worry about being late to class.
If a professor is five or ten minutes late to class it’s not a big deal, but if a student is that late we get reprimanded or our grades are affected.
Professors don’t even have to worry about fines because there is always a parking spot available for them, all they have to worry about is if their permit is visible.
It doesn’t make any sense. ESU gives its students a minimum of $25 fines for the smallest infraction but then gives them the worst possible locations for parking.
Sure, there are some good spots but only a lucky few get them.
If we switched some faculty lots to student lots or even just got to share the lots, it would make dealing with the strict rules a little more bearable but we don’t get to use the faculty lots, we have to park all across campus and we get heavy fines.
Where is the sense in that?
Email Adam at:
acapotorto@live.esu.edu
