This fall will be my second year here at the University of Southern Mississippi. Since the first time I visited Southern Miss for a tour before ever enrolling here, deep down I knew this would be my home for many years to come. And I’m so thankful I made that choice because there is no other university like Southern Miss in the state of Mississippi. There’s so many positives to our university from the open and exciting atmosphere to the soothing beauty of our campus.

But every now and then, you’ll find a negative. I just recently discovered one myself.

The Parking Management at our university has recently unveiled a new system of parking decals where students and staff no longer are required to have a physical hanging parking decal. Instead, the license plate of your vehicle will be registered within the parking system and will be able to be scanned and recognized by campus police. You can easily register for parking online by entering your vehicle information and license plate number -- and that’s it. Sounds pretty convenient, right?

That is until you discover the price of registering your vehicle.

The price for registering is $162. Let me repeat: the price for simply placing your vehicle information online is $162 for just one school year. And that’s not the price for anywhere and everywhere on campus. There are tons of restricted zones where students are not allowed to park. Just to emphasize the excessive price, let’s take a look at parking prices from other notable universities in our state.

Mississippi State University (MSU) charges $145 for residents and $135 for commuters.

Delta State University and Jackson State University both require only $40.

And William Carey University blesses their students and staff with a free parking decal.

So why is our price for parking $20 higher than the number one ranked university in our state, which is MSU? Shouldn’t our university whose rank is number three be at least lower if not the same charge?

It’s not just me, folks. An increasing number of staff and students are growing in discontent from this lucrative price. Maybe Parking Management is simply trying to see how much they can slide past us. But I hope they realize that people can only be pushed for so long.