By Ryan Jones

While I was visiting my family in the New Orleans area Friday night, I was in a three-car interstate accident. The car, which got bashed up pretty bad, will be in a Louisiana repair shop, so I got a rental that I’ll probably be driving for the next month. The wrecked car had two parking stickers: one from my apartment complex and one from Southern Methodist University.

On Monday, I got a temporary sticker for my rental car from both. I was surprised and frustrated to find out that, though the sticker from my complex was free, SMU gave me the choice of paying $26 for a temporary tag or $30 in “lost/damaged” fees for a new sticker.

Parking at SMU costs students $280 per year, and tuition, of course, costs a lot more. I was disappointed that a private company could be more accommodating toward an SMU student who had gotten in a car wreck than the university itself.

Shame on the university’s Parking and ID Card Services Office for nickeling and diming its students for circumstances beyond their control. A free temporary pass under those circumstances and a little sympathy would have been much more impressive and representative of this university’s values and beliefs.

Jones is a first-year law student.