I will be a senior this fall, meaning this is my fourth year on campus. For the past three years, I have been able to register for my parking permit basically as soon as I registered for my classes, and for the past three years, I have had no trouble obtaining my commuter west parking permit. Yes, sometimes having commuter west is a pain, because most of the time – especially on Tuesdays and Thursdays if you have class after 10 a.m. – you have a problem finding a parking space.

Yet being an advertising major and an art minor, I deal with it because it is much more convenient to the buildings I have classes in. With the changes made to parking this year, I wasn’t really worried. I figured, being a senior, I should have no trouble getting commuter west parking. I also thought that, because it is done based on when students registered for classes, it would be done the same way as football tickets, with only so many spaces per type of parking allotted per day.

This was obviously not the case. By late morning on Monday, June 29, I was already seeing Facebook statuses from friends saying commuter west parking was sold out. I still at first assumed it was just the allotted amount of spaces for that day. Well, about 11:50 p.m. on Tuesday night, I sat down at my computer, waiting on 12:01 a.m. to roll around, because that was the date and time my email said I would be able to register.

I got curious about how everything was going to go through, so about 11:55 p.m., I clicked the link to register for my permit, expecting it to pop up and say, “This is not your allotted day. Please return on the date and time sent to you.” It ended up not saying that at all. The page to register came up right away. At this point, I was really confused as to why it was already allowing me to register. Then I realized that commuter west was not even an option and that I was going to have to place my name on the waiting list.

At this point, I became very upset. If it was already allowing me to register before the date and time sent to me, was it possible that I could have gotten my commuter west permit before it sold out? Everything seems to be very screwed up with this system. The University claims they changed it this year to make it easier for those who would be living in dorms and did not yet know which one they would be living in. I feel that if that is the case, why not just make an option of “I will be living in a dorm” and then inform those students that once they have received their dorm assignment, they should return and pick up that specific lot permit.

Let everyone else register for permits when they register for classes. It seems highly unfair to me that a senior student who has had commuter west parking every other year would not be allowed to have that parking as a senior. I think parking and transportation services should get their act together and think more about what they are doing before they change up their system and screw a lot of senior students over.

Laura DaLee is a senior majoring in advertising.