Letter to the Editor
Parking
ticket blues and permit red tape too.
In response to last Tuesday’s Op/Ed regarding parking ticket- crazed
staff, there are new parking permit procedures this semester for Graduate
Teaching Associates. You know, all of the instructors who teach the introductory
classes on campus.
In the past TAs were permitted to purchase a faculty and staff parking
permit while semester-long employment contracts were pending. This allowance
permitted TAs to park in the faculty and staff lots on their way to teaching
class, meeting with students, etc. But this year new procedures have been
implemented.
Graduate teaching associates have to wait until after signing their teaching
contracts before being authorized to purchase a faculty and staff parking
permit.
Petty? As the first Ticket Blues Op/Ed stated, finding a parking space
is close to an Olympic event here at Fresno State.
Now TAs, who subsist below that of undergrads rather than as kin to adjunct
faculty, are experiencing yet another bureaucratic whammy.
This semester TAs are entitled to wait in line to purchase ‘temporary’
faculty and staff parking permits, only valid for the first week of school.
Then, once contracts have been signed, TAs may wait in line for the one
semester faculty and staff permit.
I guess someone really thought contracts would be available for signing
the first week of the semester.
Yeah, right! So, does this mean
TAs wait in line to purchase yet another ‘temporary’ permit,
and another?
The real result is the enforcement of a culture of frustration forced
on students to appease a policy monitoring auditor or perhaps the paltry
increase in revenues from all the purchases of temporary parking permits.
D. K. Miniel
- Graduate Student and Teaching Associate
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