The wind whips through your hair as the cold rain pelts your face. Mucus drains out of your nose as the next coughing fit sets in.
It's cold.
You're sick.
And you're walking to the Amelia T. Wood Health Center because there are no parking spots available and you don't want to gamble with Parking Services.
Now you risk receiving a $75 invalid permit ticket if you're parked there for more than an hour.
Finding a parking space at the Health Center just got a little more difficult.
Parking restrictions for the Health Center lot are now being more fully enforced, and students have taken notice.
With 15 parking spots and about 20,000 people enrolled at Ball State University, someone is bound to be left out in the cold; but why punish the sick people?
Blame cannot be focused entirely on Parking Services, no matter how many tickets you've received from them.
One main cause of the heavy enforcement, Director of Public Safety Gene Burton said, was the abuse of the spots by students who were not going to the Health Center and instead using the lot to park in while attending class.
It is wrong and ridiculous that some students would have been using the lot reserved for the sick or wounded. However, it still doesn't change the fact that parking at the Health Center has been, and will be, a concern until the lot reflects the magnitude of the student body.
Enrollment this year is at 20,243. Enrollment when the Health Center was built, in 1964, was 10,000. That doesn't include the faculty and staff members who also have access to the center.
Fifteen parking spaces just aren't enough anymore.
The regulations for parking near the Health Center should accommodate the long waiting times that can sometimes occur when all of campus has the flu.
Whether you are there three hours or 30 minutes, your primary concern should not be if you receive a ticket when you try to receive treatment. It should be getting healthy.
Obviously there is always the option of having someone drive you to the Health Center and picking you up afterward. However, that is not useful when your roommates are not home.
If increasing the number of parking spots is not an option, perhaps looking into some kind of glorified charter service would be possible.
Charlie's Charter runs nightly to ferry students from one place to another, the same concept could be applied to ferrying sick students from their home or residence hall to the Health Center.
Rules and coverage areas would have to be established. It's not quite feasible for the charter to drive to Yorktown to pick up a commuter, but Silvertree Apartments shouldn't be that hard of a trip to manage.
Add a few more dollars to the Health Center fees we all pay to provide a service that would benefit many students.
Another option could be giving students hang tags to put in the windshield of their cars while waiting for treatment.
It boils down to one thing - something's got to change.
Sneezing, coughing students shouldn't have to trudge from their apartment four blocks off campus in the winter because they don't want a ticket.
While that ticket on your windshield might be useful to wipe your runny nose, $75 is a bit expensive for a tissue.
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