The Independent has criticized the university administration for a “don’t make waves, don’t rock the boat” mentality. A mentality that often caused administrators to fear taking action to solve what might be universally accepted as a big problem. Finally there is one who has, for all the right reasons, rocked the boat and taken action.
For about a year and a half, students taking classes at El Centro have had no place to park. Ever since developers bought the Jewel Food Store across from El Centro and walled it off, students and faculty circle the neighborhood or wait in their cars in a rush-hour no-parking zone for the spots to become legal. To add insult to injury, some of them also had to pay for that privilege.
Ann Weaver runs the parking office. Her office registers drivers and their cars, issues permits and gives tickets. Until now, drivers who’d taken classes at El Centro or another campus and wanted parking had to pay for it based on all their credit hours, El Centro classes or not. Drivers could opt out of parking completely but then could not park anywhere on any campus. It was an all-or-nothing situation.
Ann Weaver thinks it is wrong that students pay for a service they cannot use. True, two lots have been acquired for El Centro, but they will not be ready until January of next year, so what of this semester?
Weaver has stated she will adjust charges for students taking only part of their course load at El Centro, but this is not as simple, a prospect as it may appear.
Students taking only some of their classes at El Centro cannot be automatically separated out of the general student population by the university’s computer systems, according to Vice President of Finance and Administration David Jonaitis. So students must come to Weaver to have the charges adjusted. There are also issues with financial aid, add/drop periods and Weaver’s access to student records.
But Weaver sees an injustice, a “wrong” as she put it, and will exercise control over what areas she can affect to fix it.
The university and the world need more Ann Weavers: people who do not say “this is not my problem” or “this is not my job to fix,” but rather people who say, “This is a problem” and “How can I fix it?” This attitude harkens back to another era, a time when John F. Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
Recently, the social networking site Facebook.com upset its membership by installing features that exposed their privacy just a bit too much. Three quarters of a million people joined one protest group on Facebook in a matter of days. There was a wave of protest, and rightfully so. But were they looking out for what they could do for others, or simply protecting themselves? Protest for self-preservation is easy. But taking a risk for something which may not affect you personally is not.
This is why Ann Weaver needs to be applauded and why she needs our open and vocal support. What she plans might not work. It might be stopped by higher-ups in the administration. Even if it ultimately fails, Weaver saw a problem and took the bull by the horns to fix it. We could all learn by her example.
So when there is a problem and they tell you “Give it up. It’s not going to happen. It’s a state bureaucracy. You can’t get it done,” don’t believe them.