Parking at the university

I would like to bring to the attention of readers of The Times the misrepresentation of the precincts officer as carried in the report regarding the car parking situation at the university.

Firstly there is not even one single car park that is for the use of academic staff of the university, as was implied.

There are several car parks reserved for the staff of the university, which implies another category, the non-academic staff who use these reserved car parks. The non-academic staff are the support staff who include secretarial staff, lab and technical officers, beadles, gardeners, maintenance people, the university civil service at central administration, the precincts office itself and others. At present the number of non-academic staff at the university is of the same order as that of the academic staff.

All the non-academic staff park their private cars in the morning in the most convenient locations and not more than 100 metres from the building where they work. By the time they do this, 75 per cent of the reserved car park places have been taken up by the non-academic staff. The rest are quickly taken by the academic staff as they come in, starting at 8 a.m.

The academic staff are expected to come in from 8 a.m. but the nature of our work requires flexible hours and includes lectures at noon and at one 1 p.m. at what is normally considered a lunch break. By 8.30 a.m., except for one or two spaces, there are no longer spaces available in these reserved car parks. So by 8.30 a.m., according to the precincts officer, while 100 per cent of the non-academic staff are nicely and comfortably parked in the most convenient locations for them, 80 per cent of the academic staff are supposed to start a game of find that space, in and out of the various car parks, ring road etc. I leave it to the readers of The Times to judge whether to expect the same working environment as other employees is just, logical and reasonable.

The reality therefore is not that the academic staff are parking outside their lecture rooms, which in any case vary from one course to another, but that the non-academic staff of the university are parking right beside their offices. I will start with the precincts office and ask the precincts officer to tell readers how far away he and his staff park their cars from their office.

This issue, and the way the precincts officer reacted in the final sentence of the article, is symptomatic of how the work environment for academic staff has deteriorated over the past years. The precincts officer did not feel that there is anything wrong in denigrating the university academic staff in public. His perception must come from a reasonable assumption that he expects that the university authorities do not mind that a university official denigrates academic staff in public. Is this so?