When visitors come to your home, how do you treat them? With respect, with dignity and giving all the attention they deserve, for the simple fact that they are visitors in your home. Last week, a visitor to Prairie View’s campus, our home away from home, was disrespected, ignored and treated unfairly.
Campus policy now requires all visitors to check in with the information office, at the entrance of campus to obtain a $2 parking decal. After purchasing this decal, visitors are expected and encouraged to park in visitor parking.
On this occasion the visitor in question was left with no place to park at building, she would be occupying for the hour.
So since she was unaware, or unsure of where else to park on campus, she parked at the end of the designated parking spots and made her own parking.
She returned to her vehicle to find, to her surprise, a ticket on her windshield.
Upon returning to the information center, she was welcomed to the fact that she could expect a ticket of $100 to be in the mail in a few weeks. The question is this how we treats our visitors?
First question would be: If all spots where occupied in the MSC, the only building she would be utilizing for that day, where else was she supposed to park.
Let us be remained of the unfinished “dirt” lot that serves as no purpose for this fall semester. Was she, a visitor, really expected to park clear across campus, and walk the campus, just because we are a “walking campus?”
Well clearly, we are no longer a “walking campus” because we now have a shuttle bus, which voids “walking on campus.”
Second, a $100 fine for a visitor when there is not enough parking, and no instructions as what to do in the situation was unfair. Would not a warning suffice in this situation?
We want to show hospitality, right? Make visitors feel at home? Attend to their needs but instead we ticket them for wanting to visit our beautiful campus, for actually doing the right thing and going through the procedure to even get a decal, which most don’t know about.
I know rules are made to be followed. However, there are exceptions to every rule, and here our visitor should not have been ticketed, especially when the problem lies in the university’s hands.
Let’s do a little better to treat our visitors as we would want them to be treated, so that they will want to visit our campus in the future, and so that they will continue to support us.
Do not fine them, and make them not want to return. Come on, as John Stossel, from 20/20 would say, give’ em a break.