Before the fall semester of 2012, parking on campus was divided up into different zones. Each zone was reserved for different groups, and each group had a specific parking permit that corresponded with their zones. The zones were color coded, with teachers allowed to park in green spots and students allowed to park in blue and white striped spots.

Even now, one can see that the green spots are closer to the classroom buildings so that the professors could park closer to the buildings in which they taught. Of course, the permits for teachers had a higher price tag than that of the student permits, since they got the better parking spots.

Once the university made the controversial switch to open parking, the teachers lost these parking spots, but were still required to pay more for their permit. While most did not like this decision, they cooperated with the rules and bought the more expensive permits.

However, it has now been proposed to raise the price of parking for professors even more. Even though the professors get no special privileges with the more expensive permits, the school wants to charge them more for the same rights that everyone else has.

This does not seem like the right course of action. It does not follow any sort of logical or ethical reasoning to raise the cost of parking for faculty even after taking the privileges that they were paying extra for away. It simply does not make sense on any level to make this change.

With the institution of the open parking system, faculty members have only a few choices. They can either get to campus extremely early to park, park far away and walk like everyone else or park at the First United Bank Center and catch a ride on the shuttle to campus. How can the university charge these people more when the professors gain nothing? In fact, they have actually lost privileges, or sleep, in all of this parking turmoil.

While the university may need to come up with some extra money to cover expenses, this is not the way to go about it. The strength and quality of our faculty are some of the greatest assets of the school. There are many students who come to WT because the faculty here is so great. Is this the way to reward these men and women for doing their duties so well?

While giving faculty members special parking privileges can be controversial, charging them more while giving them nothing in return is even more so. It seems there are two choices that would be fair for all parties involved. Either the university go back to having zone parking so that they can charge faculty more to have better parking, or they do not raise the cost of faculty parking in the open parking system. Charging faculty more to park like everyone else just does not portray the kind of ethics that the university has shown in other matters and should not happen.