I am writing in response to an article that appeared in The Northern Star on Oct. 7 regarding the NIU parking committee. The article states that members of the committee were “concerned” and even “irate” about recent changes made in parking allocation. The fact of the matter is that the directors of the committee and parking division made a decision to deal with an ongoing problem in a timely fashion.

The problem affected hundreds of university students and personnel. The decision made was to make a limited number of spaces available that were recently taken away from certain groups of people (e.g. graduate assistants). The decision was based on unequivocal data collected over a period of time. There were numerous spaces in specific parking lots that were not being used even during the busiest hours of the day. Meanwhile, there were numerous individuals who were daily faced with a major inconvenience that could easily be eliminated if parking space were being used efficiently.

I find the objections of some of the members of the parking committee to be rather ironic. Last spring when the committee reported the proposed changes, numerous individuals responded in word and action to get the committee to reconsider the proposed changes.

A blatant example of the type of response from the committee at that time concerns a petition. A petition reflecting the concerns of many graduate students and personnel was brought forward to the committee. The purpose of this was to call attention to the large number of people that the decision would be affecting in a negative way. The result: the committee voted to ignore the petition. That is not the type of response one would hope to find at a public institution.

Finally, when the opportunity arose to make a decision for the welfare of the university as a whole and not just a specific group, the committee directors took the data that had been collected which reflected how parking space was being used, and the directors made a very admirable decision. If members of the committee are concerned because they feel as if they had no voice in the matter, I suggest that the committee members remember that feeling the next time another group asks to be heard.

Personally, I appreciate the effort made by Mr. Parker, Mr. Bornhueter, and Ms. Fraser to confront this issue in a timely way. Also, I respect the fact that their decision was based on actual data and not hearsay.

Teresa Bossert

Graduate Assistant

Psychology