As we enter the last official academic winter quarter in CSUEB history, I have begun to wonder more intensely about what the semester conversion will look like and how it will affect students as we edge closer to fall 2018. Upon researching on how the semester conversion will affect my academics, I also started to question how it will affect my wallet.

After your books are paid for, financial aid comes in and you pay off your credit card as well as buy 150 packets of ramen to hold you down for tough times,  there’s still one expense many CSUEB students must purchase: a parking permit. $130 a quarter, $390 a year, and nearly $1700 over four and a quarter years — because who really graduates in four years at East Bay? — is what it will cost to park your car at the CSUEB Hayward campus. I don’t know about you, but $130 is not a minute amount of money. Also, as the potential of another tuition increase looms for the 2018-19 school year, I’ll need every dollar I can find to make it through my last year at East Bay next year.

Just as I began to figure out how I am going to pay for next year’s day-to-day expenses, I read that parking permits will be $195 a semester, via the CSUEB semester conversion website. Although the price of the permit is simply the three quarters added together then split in half, nearly $200 to park a quarter mile away from class is a stretch. According to 2015 CSUEB alum Bill Nguyen, just a decade ago in 2008, the CSUEB parking permit was only $30 a quarter, which is 6.5 times less than the fall 2018 price. After contacting the campus transportation office, they confirmed the price and added that administration even asked them to raise the price higher than the $195 a quarter, but they graciously denied the request.

With a campus of students who are 80 percent commuters and only two shuttles stops, the parking permit price increase is no small commodity, and at this rate, will eclipse the $200 threshold by the end of the decade.