I totally agree with your editorial titled “Parking system needs overhaul” that was published Friday. I was thinking of writing a letter about parking spaces (especially for yellow stickers) and parking meters to Campus Parking Services. When I saw the editorial in the Northern Star, I was so happy someone finally touched on this important issue at NIU.

In the Chicago loop, the city raised prices to park at a meter to 5 minutes per quarter and limited the total time people can park. I was thinking this was a kind of a robbery. Not even 15 minutes for a quarter but 5 minutes. And when I was parking my car in a parking meter located in front of the Campus Recreation Center, I saw the same rates on our meters. I was shocked. This is not a good way to treat people, and I believe this is not a good way to make money for the university either.

I used to purchase yellow stickers but not anymore. They are useless because I cannot find a space (while there are plenty of parking spots for blue stickers) and am forced to park my car somewhere around the campus with a tow risk. I believe there is no reason parking on the NIU campus should be a problem, because we have a pretty large area and plenty of parking spaces here. This is a big problem just because of an ineffective parking services administration.

Thank you so much for bringing up this issue. Thanks for your editorial.

Erhan Cankal

Graduate student and T.A. in economics