Bring Back Faculty Parking

Yesterday, I had to park about a quarter-mile from my office. I teach afternoons and evenings on Mondays, so by the time I arrived, the campus parking lot was full to the perimeters. Like many community colleges, in some kind of vague notion of the idealization of egalitarian values, we have no designated faculty parking where I work.

"What's wrong with that?," I suppose you're asking. Why shouldn't faculty have to walk like everyone else? They're not special.

I beg to differ for the following reasons. For one thing, faculty members have to tote multiple bags to work every day, including but not limited to laptop computers, books and other reading materials, graded papers and exams, and other teaching props and tools. Many also must carry their lunch, since they don't make enough money or have enough time to eat out every day. Students generally have one knapsack with a couple of books and a notebook. When you work somewhere for 20 years, it's a nice perk to not have to walk the length of two football fields to get to your office from your parking space.

I also dispute the notion that faculty are not worthy of special treatment when it comes to parking. The hierarchal structure that esteems faculty and others is a system that has worked for hundreds of years; it helps to instill respect in younger people as well as a sense of envy. This envy, with any luck, is part of what drives to succeed. Parking is a symbolic benefit, really, but it's symbolic of what you achieve when you put in the hard work and time required to receive an education. If all the benefits are yours to start with, what's the point?

Good parking is also a no-cost and easy-to-facilitate benefit for employees. It's a way of bestowing reward on your employees and faculty members just for being loyal and hard workers. At Google and other young Internet companies, employees receive such perks as free massages, nap time, cook-to-order meals, and in-office gym facilities. Surely a decent parking space is not so much to ask.

Granted, when I was a student at UT in Austin, I got pretty irked seeing all the empty faculty spaces when student parking was for all practical purposes non-existent. But then, I was 18, so what did I know? Not much.

Disclaimer: It occurs to me that people get in trouble for posting about work. I want to state for the record that the above post is not meant to reflect poorly on my employer. This is a general trend with colleges everywhere.