It is my belief that almost every student at UNM has had some sort of dilemma/issue with parking services.
I discovered this as I lamented my recent problem with parking services to my fellow students! Parking around the UNM area is hectic. It always has been and always will be. That’s why I was extremely excited when, after waiting years and years, I received an M-lot pass last semester. However, I was not able to purchase an M-lot pass this semester.
Why? Well, the answer depends on whom you ask at parking services. I received three entirely different answers from three employees.
These answers ranged from there are no more M-lot passes available; your college did not send their list of people that can have access to the M-lot, so contact your dean; to we gave all the M-lot passes to the medical students that have clinicals at 5 a.m.
Of course I had issues with all of those answers, but my biggest concern was, how can you give my parking privileges to another when my current permit hasn’t even expired yet? No one cared about my concern, and the basic answer I received was that I should’ve purchased my permit sooner.
Now, as a college student, I normally don’t have piles of money in my pocket to pay for tuition, books, parking passes, syllabi, scrubs, and equipment such as stethoscopes, blood pressure cuffs, hemostats and carpajets. Heck, I even struggle to pay my mortgage, car payment, utility bills, insurance and personal loans.
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Thank goodness UNM allows students to charge purchases to student accounts. However, Parking Services will not allow students to charge their passes to an account. I wonder, why not? UNM employees can have the cost of their parking permit deducted from their paycheck — why can’t we as students charge a permit to our student accounts?
All that being said, it disgusts me to walk out to the east M-lot parking area to see numerous parking spaces unoccupied. It disgusts me even more to begin my trek to my car and discover that the west dirt M-lot is entirely empty. As I turn another corner I again become disgusted to find the lower M-lot entirely empty!
I should close by saying that this parking dilemma might not have been such a major concern to me, but lump this one problem into all the other problems I alone have encountered during my college career, and you create a plethora of issues!
These include the following:
l Financial aid losing my file, to financial aid suddenly deciding that I am a graduate student instead of an undergraduate student, thereby reducing my eligibility for loans.
l The undergraduate college placing a hold on my student account every semester so that I am unable to register until I have had my counseling session with them.
l Paying a lot of money toward student fees and not having syllabi provided for me in class, but instead having to purchase them from UNM Digital Printing, which, by the way also does not allow students to charge to their accounts.
College is not about the educational and life-learning experiences. It is about how high you can jump to get through the hoops they place in front of you, and how intact your mental status can remain!
Dawn Lehner,
Undergraduate Student
