Between tuition and books, supplies and – if students commute to campus – gas, it is common knowledge that the first few weeks of any semester leave student wallets aching.
The last thing students want to do is fork out an extra $180 to park on campus, so why must we do it all at once?
“It’s too expensive to park on campus,” Aubrey Glidden (freshman, Liberal Studies) said, echoing a sentiment shared by many students at California State University, Stanislaus.
Glidden, like many other students, chooses to park off campus in order to avoid adding the extra $180 cost to her list of school expenses.
This process would not be nearly as painful if the payment wasn’t all at once.
“It seems, for me, more easier to pay it off,” Irving Anaya (freshman, Chemistry) said, stating he would pay the same price for a parking permit if he could do so through a payment plan.
“Everything is much easier in small payments.”
It’s understandable, though painful, why tuition and book fees must be paid upfront.
Books are necessary for many classes after the first day, while tuition ensures that students are not occupying class seats needlessly.
“[Students] do pay a lot of fees,” Steve Jaureguy, Chief of Police at CSU Stanislaus, said.
“Students, whether you have three units or 13 units, pay mandatory fees of over $540 a semester; not for parking but for the other areas: for the Student Health Center, for the Associated Students […], and those fees total $5.4 million a semester. Those are mandatory fees, whether you use any of those facillities or not.”
However, parking is a resource which does not need to be paid for immediately and entirely.
If it is flexible enough to where we can turn in our passes halfway through the semester for a partial refund, we should be able to pay the same $180 fee in monthly or bi-monthly increments.
Implementing a monthly or bi-monthly payment system for parking passes will alleviate students of yet another large bill.
“Students who pay to park – that’s the only optional fee that they have a choice to pay, and when they pay that fee, they have 100 percent use of those facilities over the period of time that permit is valid,” Jaureguy said.
“So for example, this Spring term, the students would pay for a parking permit: $180. That permit is valid for 100 days. The effective cost of your permit is $1.80 a day.
“You’re paying about $5 a day for all the other fees, parking is the most valuable – the most efficient fee any student is paying.”
But on a campus full of commuters, is a parking permit so “optional”?
Parking off campus usually requires a ten-minute hike to class if students can find an area that doesn’t require a residential pass.
Permits pay for the upkeep of our lots on campus, but many can barely afford to use them.
If CSU Stanislaus wants to make our only “optional” fee feel more efficient, students should be given the option to pay in increments.
The first week of the semester already scalds without the extra fee to park.
The ability to pay permits off a little at a time may just be the aloe CSU Stanislaus students need.