To this day, I am not even sure if the Commuter Council was even aware that they had a crisis on their hands.  I, like many others this semester, was refused an on-campus parking pass.
And I, like so many others, was only told why weeks after the fact.  To this very day, the Wilkes University Commuter Council has not answered my emails.
The organization of the parking pass system at Wilkes is overly complicated and quite deceiving. To most students it may seem as if Public Safety is in charge of choosing who does and does not receive parking passes. This is not true.
For on-campus residents, Resident Life chooses qualified candidates for parking passes; for off-campus and commuter students, Commuter Council is in charge of choosing good candidates.
Neither Res Life nor Commuter Council sends out emails to notify students if they did not qualify for a parking pass. This is surely something that must be changed.
Last week The Beacon did an online editorial on the Wilkes’ parking pass system that I urge you to check out. The editorial focused on Tim Jurkowski, an off-campus nursing student in Army ROTC who seemed to be overlooked when it came to parking passes this semester.
Now Jurkowski has to get ride with Public Safety to the Ralston lot early in the morning in order to get to nursing clinicals and ROTC physical training.
Jurkowski,was seemingly denied a parking pass because he lived too close to campus. The apartment building we both live in does not supply us with private parking. Thus, Jurkowski, many other off-campus and commuter students, and I were turned down.
Being adjacent to campus did not affect another student, Ryan Weber, from getting a parking pass. Weber lives the same distance from campus, however, he received a parking pass as usual this semester.
Meanwhile several commuter students, who actually drive to class in the morning, were denied parking passes along with Tim “super-busy” Jurkowski.  This makes me seriously question the organization of this system.
Why are some students picked, seemingly at random, over others? Who is truly choosing who gets these passes, is it a fellow student, a faculty member, or someone from the administration?
Perhaps it is just a hogwash of random commuter council students prone to their own biases and inconsistencies. I am not sure; I have tried to reach out via email to Commuter Council several times with no response.
This parking “crisis,” as I’ve heard it put by fellow students and friends, is not fair to the students.
I understand that there are only a limited number of spots.  I have also heard many students complain that they are unable to find parking spots before class even when they have received a parking pass for the semester.  I believe that it is a necessary evil that these organizations deny students for parking.  I request, however, that the commuter council deny these students in some type of organized way and, perhaps even more importantly, communicate with students about the reasoning for this denial.

I also understand how hard it must be for Public Safety, they have had to deal with countless students calling and complaining while they themselves are not truly responsible.  I’m sure that it is a huge hassle for public safety to deal with the complaints of students and parents on the matter of parking on campus.  I assume it is also a hassle for public safety to cart students to and from the Ralston Parking Lot at 4am in the morning because commuter council overlooked a student’s needs for a parking pass.
I urge the commuter council to speak up and educate the students to whatever organizational system they have for parking passes.
In the meantime, I’ll be in the parking garage next to Boscov’s.