Ed Board continues to be amazed at this school’s disregard for students and high regard for people with money.
This is apparent with every major event we host. Right there along both sides of the Boulevard it says “NO PARKING”, yet there are cars packed bumper to bumper there.
Sometimes an SMU police officer is stationed on the Boulevard to assist people in finding the event (probably to guard those Jags and Lexuses as well).
Now it’s great that we host events. You can even learn something from those Tate lectures (which are free for students).
It’s even better that we charge rich people to attend them. As is stated on the Web site, “The [Tate] series annually returns almost $1 million to the University.”
However, allowing, not to mention endorsing, hypocritical behavior is extremely irritating. If visitors can park in “NO PARKING” spaces, why can’t students?
Maybe they should change the phrase to “NO STUDENT PARKING”.
Admittedly a ticket to a Tate lecture is going to cost at least $40, but we pay $250. That’s the same as a second balcony season pass by the way.
Ed Board doesn’t actually mind that the Boulevard is used as a parking area, just that students and faculty, the people that have paid to park on campus, aren’t allowed to park there.
If there is some valid reason why students aren’t allowed to park there, such as it being a fire lane or some such, then that reason is still going to be valid during whatever event is going on.
In fact, if patrons park on the Cox side of northbound Bishop Boulevard, then they are blocking the path of the Mustang Express.
If the administration is worried about students using up parking spaces during event time, then they could do the same thing they do for football games.
That is, email everyone and tell them to move their vehicles, or suffer severe parking penalties.
Ed Board just wants to see the hypocrisy stop. We believe the school should follow one of three possible courses of action.
These are, opening the spaces to students, and then emailing them on event days, changing the signage on the Boulevard to something like “event parking only”, or actually not letting people park in “NO PARKING” areas.
We just want the hypocrisy to stop.
