A last-minute e-mail notification sent by Transportation Services has resulted in the exclusion of several graduate students and seniors from the Lot 5 parking lottery, which awards permits for a heavily desired yet limited number of spaces in the Regents Drive Garage.

An e-mail sent at 11:00 a.m. July 6 asked that students seeking parking passes for Lot 5, which are allocated for seniors and graduate students only and located on the garage’s topmost level, enter the lottery by 4:00 p.m. on the same day.

Luis Hurtado, a senior electrical engineering major, received word of the deadline at 5:30 p.m. – an hour and a half too late.

“Since I’m an engineering major, I basically have all of my classes in that area,” Hurtado said.

Hurtado will instead be parking in Lot 9, located about three-fourths of a mile away near the Comcast Center.

Radha Gholkar, a clinical psychology graduate student, said she received the e-mail when she returned from a vacation on July 11. After entering the lottery every year since she began attending the university, she has still not received a space in the lot, which is the most convenient option due to its proximity to the Biology-Psychology Building.

“It would have been really considerate of them to give us a better heads-up,” Gholkar said. “It’s really kind of absurd.”

David Allen, director of Transportation Services, said e-mail notifications are not generally used as deadline reminders. The department traditionally sends brochures via postal mail, but an e-mail was sent this year due to a delay in brochure distribution, he said.

Allen said that confusion among employees of University Printing Services caused the delay. Although University Printing does not publish the brochures, the department is responsible for their delivery.

“The problem was that University Printing believed they did not have enough copies, so they did not do the job immediately,” said Allen. “But they actually did have enough.”

Employees of the Department of Business Services refuted any allegations of negligence, saying Printing Services issued the brochures in a reasonable amount of time.

Matthew Raeder, assistant director for the Department of Business Services, said all 23,148 brochures were transferred to the post office July 3, three days before the lottery deadline. In addition to the department possibly not taking the Fourth of July into consideration, Transportation Services directed the brochures be sent bulk mail, which allows at least five days for delivery, he said.

“Transportation Services did indicate that it was dated material,” Raeder said. “They should have made sure the brochures got to us sooner.”

Monica Mann-Wrobel, a clinical psychology graduate student, said she made sure to register before this year’s deadline because previous lottery exclusions made her aware of what she calls a faulty alert system.

“There are not enough meters, which means the only way I can access my office is to walk a half mile from Stadium Drive,” she said. “It’s frustrating after all the years and time I’ve put in.”

Contact reporter Lindsay Kalter at newsdesk@dbk.umd.edu.