By Martin Montoya, Staff Reporter
For some teachers, a paid parking space is just not a possibility as the majority of CNM faculty and staff that are part time have other jobs and just cannot afford the extra fees, American and Native American History Instructor Dr. Benay Blend said.
Blend said the biggest problem is that teachers have to show up nearly two and a half hours early just to get a parking space for a 10:30 a.m. class at Main campus. As a part time instructor with a salary that has gone down with the decline in the number of classes to teach, Blend said she just cannot find a way to budget for a convenient parking space.
“I’m not going to be paying out of my measly salary for the privilege,” Blend said.
If the value of faculty members was a high priority, people in charge would really understand that part time faculty does not make enough money to afford a permit, Blend said.
“I would like to get here at a normal time,” she said.
Unable to afford paid parking on an adjunct professor’s salary, Political Science Instructor Bob Anderson said that for two to three years at the beginning of his teaching career he hauled all his books and supplies from the far end of the parking lot on Montoya campus, where parking was available.
“That really wiped out my back,” Anderson said.
After going to the doctor’s office with pain, thinking being out of shape was the problem, Anderson said the doctor found that the pressure from the book bag he carried everyday had resulted in a ruptured disk in his lower back.
Anderson said that he now has permanent damage to his lower back which is irreparable.
“It just goes out on me and I go through a lot of pain,” Anderson said.
Anderson said that he now has a handicap placard that enables him to park closer, which he qualified for after being forced to use a walker and other painstaking tasks since his injury.
Stephen Andrews, History Instructor and Chair of History, Economics, Political Science, and Communications said that there has to be a way to solve this parking situation and the impact it has on not only faculty and students, but the part time instructors who do not have a significant amount of job security.
This is the case if teachers are traveling from campus to campus to try to get enough classes to teach to survive, he said.
“I have been part time, I have taught out of the trunk, I know what it’s about and it’s tough,” Andrews said.
CNM clearly does not have enough parking spaces to ensure every faculty member gets a guaranteed or reserved parking space, and at the same time the part-timers are expected to simply deal with these conditions, he said.
Director of Marketing and Communications Brad Moore said that as of yet there are no procedures in the works for instructors to be able to get set up with preferential parking permits, and that there are no immediate plans to change policies regarding instructor parking issues.
“I am not aware of anything in the works that would change the parking situation for employees,” Moore said.
Instructors object to lack of parking
