Dear Editor:
I would like to respond to the letter complaining about all the open A-lot parking and accusing faculty members of taking the day off. I can’t speak for all the faculty, but I can speak for my husband who is a new faculty member at BYU. We have one car at our house, so to leave me with a car each day my husband bicycles three days a week to BYU or gets a ride the other two days and runs home. We do not live close to BYU, we live five miles away, so this isn’t just a stroll down the street.
We do have an A-lot sticker and sometimes he uses it; for example, when he comes in at 5 a.m. to work on a research proposal. The other days he waits until 7:30 a.m. to leave and comes home at 6 p.m. I suspect most of the other faculty are also working fairly long hours.
We used to be students at BYU about nine years ago and would have to arrive fairly early to get a parking place. We thought that was a pain until we attended the University of Wisconsin where parking stickers are only available to people who live far away and who aren’t near a bus route. Those stickers cost more than $100 more than Y-lot ones did and got you about as close to campus as the stadium is to BYU’s main campus.
My husband put in 10 years of full-time post-high school education plus three years as a post-doctorate to get his position here and works about 55 hours a week. I think he’s entitled to a parking sticker whether or not he uses it every day.
Paula H. Bergeson
Orem
