Why is it that ISU officials insist on perpetuating the widely-held perception that their primary goal is to weasel as much money as they can out of students?

Years of skyrocketing tuition and fees have made Iowa State and its top administrators into evil, anti-student figures in the eyes of many students.

When money is taken away from a popular program, placing it on life support, or when money is drawn out of students’ already overdrawn checkbooks, it’s easy to place the blame on the authorities at Beardshear Hall.

These facts make it all the more baffling that the Department of Residence and Department of Public Safety are now involved in a dispute with students at Schilletter Village and University Village, the only family-friendly housing opportunities on campus.

Apparently, when students in both complexes signed leases this spring, they made no mention of a change in the accounting of parking fees.

Previously, tenants could park their first car on the site for free, and a second car permit was $64, according to the DPS Web site. The parking cost for the first car was a part of students’ rent.

Now, DPS will be maintaining the family housing parking lots instead of the Department of Residence, and they want to collect fees ($79 for the first vehicle, $72 for the second) separately from the rent paid to the Department of Residence, which makes sense.

Although residents would certainly like for that change to cause their monthly rent to go down, it also makes sense that the entire “rent plus fees” package would be more expensive in the coming year — rent increases are certainly not uncommon for university family housing or for any other living accommodations in Ames.

The problem is the ISU officials responsible for instituting the change have not had the common courtesy to make sure students understand the new system.

It seems reasonable that prospective tenants would be able to project all their living costs when signing leases, but the new information about parking fees was obviously not made clear to students, some of whom now feel that the university deliberately held back information in March, so that students would sign leases without knowing the full cost of living at University Village or Schilletter.

Whether this latest parking flap is a result of an honest mistake or not doesn’t matter — ISU officials in all departments need to take care to be up-front with students about any proposed fee change, avoiding even the perception of dishonesty.

A good start to healing this newest rift would be allowing family housing tenants to park at a reduced fee this year — and next year making the accounting change for parking obvious before students have to sign binding leases.

Editorial Board: Nicole Paseka, Amy Schierbrock, Alicia Ebaugh, Ayrel Clark, Lucas Grundmeier