Jobs work on the basic principle that you trade your time for monetary compensation. But if you happen to work at the Leo J. O’Donovan Dining Hall or the Campus Bookstore, and you use a car to get there, it also means you’re being robbed of some of those wages.
Georgetown offers monthly, on-campus parking to its faculty and staff for either $124 or $135 a month, depending on their salaries. The same offer is extended to a select few managers of contract services such as Marriott and Follett, whose employees work at Leo’s and the bookstore, respectively. But if the average contract employee wants to park, he or she is forced to pay the daily rate of $12, half-daily rate of $8, or hourly rate of $2 because of what the University calls “space constraints.” For 20 days of work (a conservative estimate for any given month), then, a contract employee pays $224 to park.
This policy is counterproductive. The intent of staggered monthly rates is to make parking more affordable for lower-salaried employees, but the exclusion of contract employees means that those least able to foot the parking bill are paying almost $100 more to park than star professors. Georgetown is creating a de facto caste system: the “haves” find the barriers to parking lowered, while the “have-nots” are expected find a more inconvenient form of transportation—and pay the attendant fees for doing so—or pay the often unaffordable parking rates.
In an e-mail to the Voice, Vice President of Facilities and Student Housing Karen Frank indicated that contract employees “should plan to use public transportation.” But there is almost always some space available in the Southwest garage, and many Marriott workers park there despite the heavy fees.
We understand that the University is limited in the amount of parking they can provide, but that is no excuse for its blatantly unfair parking policy. And there is some space. Begrudging its contract employees out of the dollars they’ve just paid them is no way to improve the school’s financial situation.
