With less than two weeks notice, students were in- formed that to enter the lottery for next year?s parking spaces, they must pay the full $269 fee and handle all outstanding parking tickets by this Friday.
At the same time, students learned that this fee could not be put on their term bill and that it must be paid for with either cash, check or credit card.
This rush is unfair to students and may prevent them from securing desirable parking next year. The short notice that was given is not even the length of a biweekly pay period and $269 is not small change.
If students living on campus cannot come up with the money in time, they are not guaranteed preferential parking, such as Hill Court and River Lots, and if they are forced to wait until summer they will likely end up parking at Towne House or the Nuclear Structure Research Lab ? which is not even in Rochester, but instead in Brighton.
To make matters worse, students who live on campus are the only ones affected by this treatment. Upperclassmen who live off campus are automatically placed in Park Lot regardless of when they buy their permit.
If students can charge phone bills, Flex dollars or library fines of $15 or more to their term bill, why can?t they put their parking permits on the bill? Virtually every major expense and fee related to going to UR can be rolled into the term bill ? except parking.
This inadequate notice presents a great hardship to those who must finance their own parking space. Before the current administrators of parking services arrived, students were able to add parking to their term bill. Now is the time to allow them to do so once more.
