This is in response to the letter of Aug. 26 by Ellen Panzer, Virginia Johnson, Laura S. Smart, Sondra King, Josephine Umoren, Helen Bruce Winsor, Brent Atkinson, Michael Martin and Soae Pack.

I, too, am enraged by the current parking situation. Who isn’t? No one is having an easy time finding parking, especially this semester. But it’s rougher, far and away, for students than for faculty and staff. When you have it relatively easy (i.e. when you have a blue parking permit), it’s tempting to complain when things get a little more inconvenient. It’s easy to disregard what others (i.e. students) are going through. Have you ever compared the number and size of yellow (not to mention brown!) lots to those of blue lots? Evidently not.

Why should students, rather than faculty and staff, “park in remote lots and take the bus to campus?” Are they less important? You seem to think so. Your solutions would “solve the problem for faculty and staff”—did the problem for students ever enter your mind? Do their problems matter? Perhaps the university should revolve around the nine of you and your problems?

Why the special concern for grad assistants? It was very generous of you to recommend that they get “some spaces” (but certainly “not the choicest ones”); I’m sure grad students everywhere are applauding your big-heartedness.

What we need to keep in mind here is that—although NIU consistently puts students at the bottom of the totem pole in most aspects, and although the university certainly couldn’t operate without its faculty and staff—without students this university wouldn’t exist. None of us would have to worry about parking, because none of us would have jobs. We’re all frustrated. But you think you’re enraged now? Try being a student.

Ann Barnes

Staff

English Department