Letters
to the editor: Parking difficult for teachers
too
In
Citizen Kane, the New York Inquirer launches
campaigns against Wall Street swindlers,
traction trusts, slumlords, and the Spanish
navy. The Oct. 8 issue of the On-line Forty-Niner
is squarely in this muckraking tradition.
Your front-page story by Emmy Gonzalez is
as crusading as anything Kane (or Hearst)
ever published. And what exemplar of corruption
did you choose as a target? Staff members
who park in general parking spaces! The
perfidy! As another character in Citizen
Kane asks, "Is that really your idea
of how to run a newspaper?"
A
little math. We can agree that $63 per semester
is an unreasonably high fee for a parking
space. But parking isn't free for staff
members; we pay $14 per month, year round.
So while the typical full-time student pays
$126 in a year, staff pay $168. Thinking
of everything I could do with that extra
$42 brings tears to my eyes. Furthermore,
staff members are required to buy all of
their groceries at the company store, and
are paid in Chuck E. Cheese tokens. OK,
the last part isn't true, but still.
And
it certainly seems greedy of staff to park
in general parking spots, when they have
the staggering number of 2,079 spots of
their very own. Of course, according to
the Office of Institutional Research, there
are 3,489 staff and faculty. So 1,410 are
out of luck. And unlike students,
staff members generally have to be here
five days a week, all day.
There's
a little saying that I think is pretty relevant
to this situation. Hard-earned wisdom from
your elders, kids:
I
cried because I had no parking space. Then
I met a man who had no feet.
Also,
he had no parking space. He did, however,
have shoes.
I
hope this clears things up.
--
Matthew Dessem
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