In February 2008, the SMU’s President’s Executive Council (PEC) passed a mandatory health insurance requirement. Such policy guarantees that all enrolled students will have cost-effective access to medical care at facilities such as our own SMU Memorial Health Center, which provides convenient medical diagnosis and treatment of illness or injury for students, faculty and staff.
Unfortunately, it appears that the University has not been entirely genuine about how “convenient” they want medical care to be.
The closest student parking lot to SMU Memorial Medical Center is the Binkley garage, approximately 450 yards away. Such a walk will take five to six minutes for the average student. A closer available alternative is less then a dozen parking meters located directly outside the center. These meters require students to pay for their parked time in spite of the fact that they have already purchased a parking sticker. This is notwithstanding that a sizable parking lot exists at SMU Memorial Health Center that is reserved exclusively for healthy, able-bodied staff and residents.
This worrisome issue was brought to my attention on Sept. 9 when I personally received a ticket for an expired parking meter as the result of medical care that lasted longer then anticipated. Immediately bringing my concerns to the Park N’ Pony office, I was informed that University employees lacked the discretionary authority to handle such matters and an appeals process is required. The appeal board specifically concluded that “[a]ll meter spaces are to be paid solely for the duration of usage for any reason at any time. Please observe all parking signage.”
While I can appreciate black and white rules, it is paradoxical to penalize students for utilizing healthcare that our institution has mandated we purchase. Does the appeal board expect students to ask their physician to wait while they run outside to feed the meter? What if they are bleeding? What if they are sedated? According to the Park N’ Pony appeal board’s decision, all of those factors would be irrelevant. The University is sending the message that sick students must decide between risking a parking ticket or walking one-third of a mile while conferring curb-side access to their healthy doctors.
This situation is distinguishable from all of the other parking dilemmas plaguing our campus because it is the only one that deals directly with students’ health and access to medical care. Consider that, come winter, an ill student might elect to worsen their condition with a five-minute walk through sleet and snow. Alternatively, and far more realistically, students will forgo seeking proper medical care altogether. Our highly qualified faculty does deserve prioritized parking, but not above the needs of ill students. Students do not want curbside access to classrooms—this is about being able to see a doctor.
Changes must be made to the current system that marginalizes our students. To ask students to pay for a parking meter in addition to their student parking permit, ticket them for doing so, and ultimately add insult to injury by denying any appeal on hard line policy grounds is gravely unjust. I pray Park N’ Pony will give this issue the attention it deserves. Some remedy for the parking situation and the appeals process must to be found.
Jason Sansone is a law student at SMU and serves as vice president of the Student Bar Association. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].