Parking at the University of Windsor
- al: Michael Szarka, Gerardo Mustapha, and Skyler Jokiel
- destinatario: The University of Windsor Administration CC: Parking Services
This petition is in response to the decision made by the University of Windsor Administration to close the main student parking lot on campus in order to prepare for the construction of the new engineering building. While everyone understands that change is inevitable and that in the long run this new building will have many positive benefits for the University, and the community, it has caused a major issue at present that is being ignored.
Parking for students has now become a nightmare with a limited amount of spots. Students were not informed at the beginning of the year of any plans to close the lot; rather we were informed in November - 3 months into the fall semester. The University's spokeswomen Lori Lewis responded in an article in Monday's Windsor Star that, "We tried to warn people this was coming. We're really sorry. We really are" but also "We have to make ourselves accessible to people other than students." The last time I checked it was students and their tuition that kept universities and other institutions in operation. What is even more appalling is the fact that members of the administration such as University President Allan Wildeman or Dr. Clayton Smith, Vice-Provost, Students & Registrar have not attempted to issue statements or deal with the situation at all. What kind of institution doesn't push to put its students and faculty first?
The purpose of this petition is to gain support for our cause in hopes someone will listen and something will be done. What we are suggesting as possible solutions is far from unreasonable:
1. Opening up the often half-full faculty lots to students seems reasonable enough but at the same time staff pay even more that students for their parking. Seeing as the lots are often half-full it does not seem unreasonable to change 1 or 2 staff lots into student lots for the time being. If students are having to adapt and make changes, why shouldn't the university's staff? This seems to be the fairest solution.
2. It seems unethical that the university would allow its parking services division to sell a similar amount of parking passes compared previous years when they were planning the development of the engineering building. Not only would they have known parking would be more limited than ever, but additionally they increased the cost of an 8-month pass to approximately $300! Obviously a full refund is out of the question, but it isn't unreasonable to think the administration should issue a partial rebate to those students who purchased passes at the beginning of the school year.
Overall a compromise needs to be reached to better deal with this problem. What has been done thus far is the University Administration merely laying out what was going to happen. There was no forum to discuss the issue, no student input, and most importantly the announcement of the lot closure wasn't made clear when passes were purchased, it was done in November AFTER ALL OF THE PASSES HAD ALREADY BEEN SOLD.
So help us out by signing this petition. Tell your friends! Tell your professor! Tell your neighbour! The University Administration may think this issue will disappear eventually if they block it out, but I guarantee that by doing that they will only make this situation much worse.
We the undersigned feel that the current parking situation for students at the University is a mess. Instead of reaching a compromise that suited everyone you have merely limited parking for students. We were not informed until November that the main student lot would be closed, by which point you had already sold all of the available parking passes. Informing students 3 months into the school year that the original terms and conditions which passes were purchased under were changing is unacceptable - not to mention the fact the cost of a pass was increased yet again this year. You may argue that Windsor students pay the cheapest for parking compared to other institutions or that Windsor has more student parking per capita than any other school, but this is irrelevant to our situation. The bottom line is that you changed the original terms of the agreement parking passes we purchased under after they had been sold without consulting the students affected.
To this point, you have yet to establish a suitable solution that works for everyone. There are two that are proposed by this petition which are far from being unreasonable compromises;
1. Opening up the often half-full faculty lots to students seems reasonable enough but at the same time staff pay even more that students for their parking. Seeing as the lots are often half-full it does not seem unreasonable to change 1 or 2 staff lots into student lots for the time being. If students are having to adapt and make changes, why shouldn't the university's staff? This seems to be the fairest solution.
2. It seems unethical that the university would allow its parking services division to sell a similar amount of parking passes compared previous years when they were planning the development of the engineering building. Not only would they have known parking would be more limited than ever, but additionally they increased the cost of an 8-month pass to approximately $300! Obviously a full refund is out of the question, but it isn't unreasonable to think the administration should issue a partial rebate to those students who purchased passes at the beginning of the school year.
While there has been no response to this issue thus far we hope that a solution that works for everyone can be found in a timely fashion. We are more than willing to compromise to find a solution but the faculty (including the administration) need to be willing to do the same thing. A forum needs to be provided as soon as possible to discuss this issue seeing as continuing to ignore this situation further will only add to the problem.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. We hope that a solution can be found that will make everyone happy.
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