Are you tired of paying thousands of dollars a semester in tuition and still having to pay for parking?

Does it churn your stomach knowing that if you do not pay for parking (or cannot afford to pay), you will be towed and have to pay hundreds of dollars to get your car back?

Does it make you sick knowing that you are not guaranteed a parking spot even if you buy a parking pass? 

HOLD TRU ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE PARKING DISASTER THEY CREATED. 

We need more parking lots, and parking must be free for students!

We pay thousands of dollars a semester to go to university and yet have to fork out even more money to pay for parking to attend the classes we already paid to have access to. Then there is the fact that there is not enough parking for how many students there are who need to drive to their classes. TRU then offers you a parking pass, for a few hundred dollars, of course, which does NOT guarantee that you will get a parking spot and if there are none available, you not only have to find parking elsewhere, but you have to pay for it too.

Thompson Rivers University has taken away parking lots to develop buildings yet offers no other adequate commuting alternatives. These buildings cannot even ease the student housing crisis as they are being sold to private buyers. Students and their studies are suffering due to TRU's incompetency in addressing this issue. The university tells students to "just take the bus," highlighting the out-of-touch privilege administration holds because the bus is not a viable option for many. Kamloops is a spread-out city with unreliable bus systems. The narrative that we should take the bus instead of driving is not a realistic solution for many reasons:

1. For many people, busing would mean they would have to have multiple transfers to get to campus. This process can take upward of 40 minutes to get to school. In numerous neighbourhoods, buses only come once an hour, which means that students may have to get to school exceptionally early just to make their class.

2. Many have to work after class to pay for the high cost of living and incredibly high tuition. How are we supposed to get to work on time? How are we supposed to get home when buses do not run late at night?

3. Busing at night can be dangerous, especially for women and LGBTQ+ people. 

4. Buses are unreliable, often running late or not even showing up, especially in winter.

5. In a pandemic, the buses can only have so many people on them, making them even more unreliable because if there are too many people on board, you will not be permitted on board, and you will have to take the next bus. 

TRU NEEDS TO TAKE ACTION BY: CREATING MORE PARKING LOTS AND MAKING THEM FREE FOR STUDENTS TO PARK IN

Sign the petition to push this topic to the forefront of the following two senate meetings at TRU on NOVEMBER 22 AND DECEMBER 13TH