Hello CB, I have not posted anything for a number of years. I have lurked and enjoyed the entertainment and insight of so many of you and I thought I would write about this recent negative experience I have had with the BYU administration and get your thoughts.

My daughter is a freshman and lives on campus at Heritage Halls. When she registered to live at Heritage Halls last year in early June, the information on the registration website showed, among other things, that parking at Heritage Halls was limited but overflow parking was available at the Marriott Center. I saw this personally. My daughter didn’t like the food situation and communal bathrooms of Helaman Halls so she decided to live at Heritage Halls and registered.
Later in August, she received an e-mail from BYU with the subject “FIRST YEAR EXPERIENCE: TRANSPORTATION AND PARKING” which also stated that parking for Heritage Halls was available at the Marriott Center.

So, she moves in to Heritage Halls and parks at the Marriott Center – and receives a parking ticket. In dealing with the ticket she is told that no, sorry, the information about parking at the Marriott Center was a mistake. She has to park on the WEST SIDE OF THE FOOTBALL STADIUM, which is a MILE away from Heritage Halls (we measured it). It is also a rather dark and isolated parking lot. My daughter works off campus so she often arrives home late and has to park there because all the other parking spaces are taken.

Of course, she isn’t happy about this and I thought that she should deal with it, being an adult and now having to deal with stuff like this. So she goes and talks to the guy over parking enforcement. He tells her that the information on the website has been out there and is a mistake and he gets a lot of complaints like this, but she needs to write an e-mail to the guy who is over the Parking Committee because he can’t do anything to change it.

Well, she gets bogged down in being a new freshman student and never writes the e-mail. So, she asks me to help her deal with it and I reluctantly agree. So, at the beginning of the new semester I call the parking enforcement guy. The first thing he says when I tell him about the Heritage Halls parking situation that we are dealing with is “I get hundreds of these calls!”, and then he says that the information about parking at the Marriott Center is a mistake and that they haven’t fixed the website information yet. He says that parking for Heritage Halls residents used to be at the Marriott Center, but they changed it. When I asked him why, he said that it was because they were giving priority to people who attend events (basketball games, primarily) at the Marriott Center. I told him that this made no sense, and that priority should be given to freshman students who actually live on campus and pay to live there over people who occasionally visit campus for a few days in a year and a few hours of the day.

He continued by saying that in a year or two they were going to put in a shuttle system for these students who have to park a mile away and that more parking would be created east of 900 East in the area of the school that BYU recently purchased. I told him that nothing they were going to do in a year or two helped address this problem that exists right now, and I stated that not only is this a quality of life issue as these freshman girls now have to walk a mile in the dark, cold and sometimes rain and snow, often carrying things like laundry, books or musical instruments, but it is also a CAMPUS SAFETY issue and creates a greater risk of harm for these kids.
He responded that they have an app called the “safe walk” app and it tracks these kids everywhere they go. I responded with a lack of confidence that an app could stop something like an assault and he said that if my daughter feels unsafe, she could call them and they would come and give her a ride. This assumes that they aren’t involved in other police work or are giving someone else a ride, or that my daughter actually thinks to call them in the first place. Kids generally don’t think that way and my daughter isn’t exactly a snowflake. She’s studied boxing and MMA for several years and is tough as nails. But, she is 5’1” and an 18 year old girl.
He finished by saying that he really had no decision making authority here but that I could send him an e-mail expressing my concerns and he would forward it to the head of the Parking Committee and the head of the Housing Committee.

So, I did. I sent him an e-mail that detailed the information we received from BYU about parking at the Marriott Center and expressed my concerns about the poor decision making in giving parking priority to sometime visitors over on-campus residents, and that this has created a lesser quality of life for these freshman students (particularly freshman girls) and a safety risk for them.

He sent it on to the heads of the housing committee and parking committee, and the housing committee guy responded to him (not me) and told him that they, in fact, had sent an e-mail to my daughter in late June, which she had opened in July, that contained the correct parking information.
I responded and forwarded the ACTUAL E-MAIL received from BYU in AUGUST and I highlighted the part that said that parking would be available for Heritage Halls residents at the Marriott Center. I told him that this information received most recently confirmed what we understood at the time we registered to live at Heritage Halls and that I expected BYU to act with integrity here and honor this representation.

He responded (and I’m not making this up) by thanking me for showing me this incorrect information and that they have taken steps to correct it. But (and here is the asinine part) that this e-mail did not come from the Department of Residence Life or BYU Police and so the information in it wasn’t valid. Wow. As if people who receive e-mails from BYU stop to look and see what department sent the e-mail to decide if the information in it is valid or not. I would be embarrassed to put something like that in writing and send it out. So, he continued, they could not allow my daughter (or anyone else who lives at Heritage Halls) to park at the Marriott Center. They offer the “safe walk” app and an actual ride for her in order to ensure the safety of their freshman girls who live on campus.

I replied that this was unacceptable, and I expected BYU to act with integrity here and honor its representation. BYU caused this screw-up and I expected BYU to fix it in a satisfactory way – for EVERYONE. I told him that it was TOTALLY IRRESPONSIBLE to require freshman girls to park a MILE away from their on-campus housing and I expected them to fix this situation RIGHT NOW. Not in a week, not next semester or next year. Now. I also told him that if they didn’t, I would go to the media and do what I could to get this story made public.

He responded by saying that they would allow my daughter to move to a different on-campus housing arrangement with more convenient parking (likely to Helaman Halls) and that they take the safety of their students very seriously. Now this e-mail was copied to the heads of the Parking Committee and Housing Committee, the BYU Chief of Police, a couple academic VPs and an attorney in the General Counsel’s office.

Well, by now I had a gutful and I responded by expressing my disgust at their lack of integrity and their incompetence at creating this miscommunication AND the parking situation that creates a greater risk to freshman girls who live at Heritage Halls. I told him that I expected BYU to fix this problem they’ve created for EVERYONE, not just my daughter, and that I would be taking this to the media.

Interestingly, no one who had any decision making authority communicated with me on this issue and they left it up to their underling who has no authority. I actually felt sorry for the guy and was disgusted at the lack of leadership displayed by these people in authority.

I’ve reached out to some media contacts I have and they have expressed a mild interest in a story, but the cynic in me tells me that this isn’t an interesting enough story unless someone is actually hurt because of it.

So, CB Collective, what say ye? Am I making too big a deal of this? Has anyone else had a similar experience? I’m pretty upset by it, as you can probably tell. I am not social media savvy but I think that people need to know about this. The people at BYU responsible for this miscommunication and potentially unsafe parking situation need to be held accountable, in my opinion. Parents of prospective BYU students who are thinking of living at Heritage Halls need to know about this situation so they can make an informed decision.

I would appreciate your thoughts. Thank you.