Parking, police and becoming a pedestrian.
I am starting this article off with an idea to keep in mind as you read. I do not dislike the Bloomsburg University Police, and I do not fault them in any way for fulfilling their duties as they have done so. Having said this, I am quite peeved.
Like other students, I’m working to pay my way through college. Yes I have loans, but they aren’t enough to satisfy the hungry beast that is our university. I don’t have much extra money, and because I am working from 4:30 in the morning, and usually get out half an hour before class, I do not have time to walk from my apartment. With this in mind, I drive and park on campus. However, this seems to take more money than I am making, as I tend to get ticketed by the police. Obviously they are doing so as it is their job, but something needs to be done. I’m fed up. To some people it may not seem like much, but I think the parking situation is ridiculous on campus.
On occasions such as mine, or other similar times, we have no option but to break the university parking procedure and park somewhere that our decal does not admit us to. Can we help this? No, we cannot. Yet, we have no choice. We can either be late for class, which most cannot afford to do, or risk a ticket. I have always chosen to risk a ticket. Fifteen dollars seems a trifle amount compared to the nearly $4,000 we pay a semester in tuition.
Last semester, the bottom level of the tri-level was a purple lot. It was changed for this semester. Why? Why are the purple decaled students forced to park so far from campus? Is it the influx of people who have black decals? I sincerely doubt it. Why do we have different colored decals at all? On a base level, it is segregation and one that I think we shouldn’t have to deal with.
What is my suggestion? Simply make one color decal for ALL commuter students, one for the students who live on campus and park their car in the blue or green lot, one for the faculty and staff and one for visitors. This ensures that the faculty gets their spots, the visitors their spots (or they can use the meters), the police can distinguish between those who commute and those who are simply parking in the tri-level to make it less of a walk to get their car. However, I am almost positive that this change won’t be made. You ask why?
The money. The police, and through them the university, make a killing on tickets and when someone cannot afford to pay them, a boot fee. I was booted the other day, since I had some outstanding tickets I couldn’t afford to pay, and I had to pay $115 to get it taken off, and pay my tickets. As such, I feel I’ll be stealing a lot of food from my parents, or relying more on my tiny meal plan to feed me. You may ask why I paid the boot at all. Well, I work in Danville and as such, I need to drive there, go figure.
I won’t pretend I know all the answers, and I may not know something that makes the different colored decals seem less pointless. However, I can’t see it right now. So until further notice, I’ll be walking everywhere. It really frustrates me that the administration doesn’t listen to the students. For example…oh, sorry. I have to spend the next thirty minutes walking to campus and back to simply meet with a teacher.
Umm.. Yea the ticketing for illegal parking is pretty ridiculous! On Friday, I had a meeting up in Hazelton for a new job… it was training, something I couldn’t really miss. I had already emailed my professor the day before to ask him if I could be excused from my class at its scheduled time… had I have been unexcused, my grade would have started out at an 80% and I couldn’t afford to start out there… and he asked me to simply come to the same class scheduled at a later time. No biggie, the meeting was supposed to over by then. Guess what?? It wasn’t. I flew down from Hazelton, averaging 100 mph the whole way, and made it to campus with three minutes to spare. I have a black lot decal and my class was in BCH, so I knew I would’ve been late to class had I parked over by the library. So I did what any student running late to class would do… I parked in the forbidden student parking… the teachers lot right behind BCH. As I was leaving my car, I saw the meter-maid standing at the top of the parking lot watching cars drive in. She was looking directly at me, getting her ticket printer ready and walked straight up to my car. I was ticketed before I was even inside the building. How freaking ridiculous is it that the meter-maids now stand in every parking lot, or at least the teacher parking lots, just so they can ticket cars as they pull in??? Is BU really that cramped for money?? I’m thinking not!!