The Bakersfield College Department of Public Safety is receiving complaints from students about the steps necessary to obtain a parking permit.
Maria Rivera, a student worker at the Public Safety office said, “Students should read the directions carefully, and if they still have questions about how to obtain a parking permit, then they should come to the office of Public Safety.”
Most students are familiar with the old way to buy a parking permit for school, which is just paying for the permit at the Business Services’ windows and having the permit issued on the spot.
For the last three years, the Department of Public Safety has been utilizing the Iparq online system. This new system offers two ways to purchase parking permits for the BC campus. The first way is similar to the traditional purchasing method in which students physically pay the cashier at Business Services, but here is where it gets really confusing.
Students are to go online to ThePermitStore.com and create a username and password to access their parking permit account. The second step is to input name, mailing address and phone number and submit the information.
The following step is choosing the type of permit a student qualifies and applies for. The two options that apply to most students at BC is Will Call Student Spring ’09 or Student Spring ’09.
When students choose which permit they would like to buy, they should click on the button that says, “Buy.”
The Will Call Student Spring ’09 is for students who have purchased permits at the Business Services and received a receipt of purchase. Those students are to bring their receipts to the Public Safety office within 3 days as proof of purchase.
The option Student Spring ’09 is only for students who have purchased their permits online at ThePermitStore.com Web site with a credit or debit card. Students who fall into this category will not need to bring a receipt to the Public Safety office but can print out a temporary parking permit right on the spot.
For the students who manually purchase the permits, the last step is to keep a record of the order number in which they were assigned, and take it to the DPS office. Students should make sure to click the “Finish” button, or all progress will be lost.
Campus officers recommend that students who plan to attend BC should definitely invest in a parking permit to safeguard themselves from receiving citations because paying for a citation is more costly than buying a parking permit.