By August Barham

April 10, 2022

 

If you were walking by Rockwood Parkway NW on March 17 around 9:30 a.m. and saw a woman in a Duct Tape laden Mazda weeping and clutching a piece of paper — that was me.

 

After spending much of my final year at American University searching for affordable parking options, I thought I had found my solution with a four-hour free parking zone on Rockwood. It was not a perfect solution, I was willfully disobeying AU’s “Good Neighbor Parking Policy,” which prohibits students and staff from parking in residential neighborhoods. But it was my only way to attend classes and use university facilities without financial concerns. When I returned to my car the morning of March 17 to find a $200 parking citation carefully tucked under my windshield wiper, I felt defeated by AU’s punishing parking policies.

 

Through hefty fees, exorbitant citation amounts and a lack of alternative options, I feel that

American University parking has financially penalized me as a low-income commuter and restricted my access to the campus and its resources — as it has to other similarly situated students.

 

In the fall of 2021, when AU resumed in-person classes, I was living in northern Virginia. Getting to campus from my apartment took about one hour and 15 minutes by Metro and about 15 minutes by car, so I opted to drive. The only question was, how would I park? I could purchase a student parking permit and gain unlimited access to the school’s nine parking areas. However, I would not be on campus all day every day, making the $506 a semester or $1,012 a year that the permit would cost me uneconomical.

 

“It makes sense if you are always on campus, I guess, but if you’re like me, I only show up to class and I leave,” said Gianna Matassa, 20, a third-year journalism major. “It doesn't make sense for me to have it. It's not like I'm completely involved with everything on campus. So, I think it's kind of an insane amount to charge for commuters.”

 

Instead, I decided to pay each time I parked on campus using Pay-As-You-Go Machines. At $2.00 per hour or $16.00 per day, I would ultimately be paying less than the price of a parking permit. Still, parking became and major and unsustainable expense. I was not only paying to park while in class, but also anytime I used university facilities. I had not realized how much time I spent on campus until my bank account started to reflect it.

 

Searching for alternative options, I discovered a small, neglected “parking lot” behind the Watkins building. The lot was in a state of disrepair, with faded lines and cracked cement, and there were no parking signs in the immediate vicinity. I hoped that I had stumbled across a forgotten corner of the campus that I could quietly utilize.

 

I was relieved to have found my little parking haven, finally able to study in the library without worrying how much each second was costing me in parking. That is until Oct. 21 when I returned from a marathon library session — cramming for the notorious COMM-Law midterm — and saw a garish parking citation glaring against my windshield. Embittered, I appealed the $75 ticket on the grounds of improper signage; I was denied.

 

Soon after the incident, AU Parking emailed students about the “virtual self-park code.” With the code, students could pay a discounted rate of $1.10 an hour — $8.80 a day — for parking through the “PayByPhone” app. For commuters such as myself and Michele Wong, 24, the code offered a more affordable alternative to Pay-As-You-Go machines and parking permits.

 

“I don't know if a lot of people are aware of the discount code,” said Wong, a fourth-year journalism major. “Every single time I go to park there are so many people using the kiosk and I almost want to tell them, ‘If you just use this code with the app you can save so much more than you're about to spend right now!’”

 

Even the cheaper parking fees started to weigh on my bank account. I began setting my parking to expire nearly exactly when my classes concluded. On Dec. 3, my parking in the East Campus surface lot was about to expire and I was just getting out of my class in Watkins. In the seven minutes that it took me to dodge past strolling students and reach my car, I received a $100 citation — a deafening blow to my struggling bank account. The citation was reduced to $25 following my appeal, still leaving me to pay $100 total. I reached out directly to AU Parking to explain my situation and to plead for alternative options.

 

“I am reaching out to ask what other options I may have because, as I said, I circumstantially cannot pay $100,” I wrote in a Dec. 23 email. “I would also like to inquire about ways in which AU Parking supports low-income students, so we are not cut off from the resources our tuition pays for because of our financial situations.”

 

My plea was met with a succinct response that ignored my request for alternative parking options.

 

“All appeals board decisions are final; We understand that you may not be able to pay the citation,” the Parking team replied. “However, we will remove all late fees once you can pay.”

 

With no word on alternative options, I continued to grapple with my parking problem on my own. This was when I started parking on Rockwood Parkway, desperate to save enough money to pay my citations before graduation. After receiving the $200 citation for violating AU’s “Good Neighbor Parking Policy” that left me weeping in my car, I was irrevocably defeated.

 

My situation seems individual and insignificant on a larger scale, but the issue at hand is one that many lower-income students face. These miscellaneous and often forgotten fees associated with secondary education can act as unintentional barriers and crushing financial stressors for struggling college students.