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Those of us who have lived in Wisconsin for a long time know that our seasons aren’t like seasons elsewhere. Our seasons usually comprise of mosquito season, road work season, Packer season and “Ow, my face hurts; it’s cold,” season.

One of those has lingered over UW Oshkosh longer than in the rest of the state.

Road work season — in this case, its cousin parking lot construction — has taken hold of the campus, and parking spots have become more limited. Particularly, long-distance commuters have been feeling this the hardest.

I feel that either more parking should be constructed, or commuter students that drive a certain distance should be allowed to purchase a special permit for reserved spots that won’t break the average college student’s bank.

I am a commuter student from Berlin, Wisconsin and have a half-hour drive to campus. I’m lucky enough to get any spot that I don’t have to pay money to park in, on top of the $300 parking pass I already paid for.

UWO students seem to agree. Transfer student Elizabeth Langkau has a 10-minute drive from just the edge of city limits. She carpools with another student most the time, and if they get to campus before 9 a.m. she says parking is amazing, but afterwards it’s awful.

“I’ve gotten actual headaches from worrying about this,” Langkau said.

Obviously, I cannot speak for everyone. I have been unable to find any statistics showing the average distance a commuter student travels or how many students live out of the city and so on. I also realize that it’s probably unfair of me to suggest that certain students should get priority over others.

That said, I and other long-distance students pay the same tuition everyone else does. We’ve gotten the same fees for amenities, food, books and other costs that other commuter students have as well.

Why is it that we might very well jeopardize those fees by potentially being late too many times and get kicked out of a class just because of parking?

I believe that having additional parking would allow the already stressful student life to be a little less stress-filled, and would not only benefit commuter students, but residential students as well.