Students have many complaints, but the one that seems to arise most consistently is parking. Many people find faults with the constantly changing number of spaces and ever-rising expense of the parking passes, and many students use tricks and cheats to avoid the motorized enforcement teams. However,these attempts only cause frustration for those who do their best to follow the parking lot rules and more work for those charged with monitoring the parking lots.
One of the easiest ways to avoid a ticket is to simply park where you are allowed. In the simplest of terms, students who chose to pay for the parking sticker have the right to park on campus. If others made the conscious decision not to pay for a sticker, they should also make the conscious decision to wait until after 5 p.m. to park on campus.
This being said, parking is not just an issue among students. Faculty and staff also can be given tickets, but these are given out much more sparingly, as they are allowed to park in both staff and student parking spots. The rise in faculty parking this year has been a sore point among students, who see the prioritization of the faculty as unfair. However, faculty members who are aged or have physical disabilities that prevent them from parking in faculty spots farther away may find it necessary to park in student parking in order to prevent injury or harm. Balancing the needs of the students with the needs of the faculty is not an easy task.
Perhaps parking services could initiate a well-being check for faculty members or encourage faculty to park where they are given space. This would make parking slightly less stressful for students.
Additionally, those who pay for parking should applaud parking services for catching students who are in the wrong. Without their regulation of parking, there would be even less parking available, and paying for a parking sticker would no longer be a useful system. As for those who choose not to pay for parking, parking nearer to campus is not worth the pain of multiple tickets or the seething of students who chose to pay.
Parking services is trying to make the ticket notification and payment system as accessible as possible. Emails are sent to the license holder with information on when, where and how violations of parking rules where made, and they even include a picture of the car for proof. Tickets are payable online (or through your student account), and if there are any questions about citations, parking services representatives are reachable by phone, a visit to their offices or email.
It is sometimes easy to forget that those who give out tickets are people as well, people who try to do their job well and get paid at the end of the day. The reason for receiving tickets is not to pointedly disgrace student drivers, but to enforce the rules that exist on campus.
Respect plays a large role in the parking lot. Parking services are members of Baylor staff. They have a job that confines them to a car for hours at a time, as well as hours that reach into the night, in order to ensure the safety and security of everyone trying to get to their car. If anything, they deserve the most patience.
Rules exist for a reason. It is best to comply, or at the very least, not yell at those who enforce them.
