Parking blunder
Monday morning marked the first day freshmen could no longer park in lot 62E because campus police decided to make it available only to commuters.
Many students, however, were unaware about the parking change, which led to a substantial number of tickets - more than 120 on Monday, mostly to freshmen. This is nearly 10 percent of the 1,516 freshman parking permits.
Contacting students while purchasing passes was the only way organizers chose to let the them know. Since this proved ineffective, the first wave of tickets should be null and void.
The decision to make only lot 64 freshman parking was made in April, when police proposed the idea to housing staff.
CMU Police Chief Stan Dinius said every student who purchased a permit over the summer was issued a notice of the change, brought on mostly because lot 64 was left empty in previous years.
Pre-registration ended July 31 and permits were mailed to permanent home addresses by the second week of August, according to the Parking Services Web site, police.cmich.edu/overview.htm.
Considering this timeline, and the fact that the targeted audience is new students getting ready to say goodbye to friends and family, shop for their residential hall rooms and prepare for their first college courses, a reminder would have been wise.
Something as simple as sending out an e-mail Sunday on the student listserv reminding students that lot 62E is now only for commuters would have helped. Surely commuters with classes on South Campus would have appreciated a reminder that there is an additional lot to use.
Parking Services officials can argue they did their part by notifying freshmen about the change, but at the same time, if Resident Assistants and upperclassmen didn't know about the change, they could be referring students to park in the wrong lot.
Any freshman who received a ticket Monday should be able to exchange their ticket for a warning rather than a fine.
Changing lot 62E to solely a commuter lot is a good idea, especially since Combined Services conducts an annual survey of parking that evaluates open spaces in parking lots, and lot 64 was identified as borderline vacant.
However, if authorities took the time to realize how much new information freshmen are inundated with throughout the first week, they would realize it would have been better to send a reminder e-mail or some other notification instead of slamming students with $25 fines.
