A car getting the boot in C commuter lot.

The four-wheeled vehicles that we operate are, safe to say, the most popular method of transportation by people in today’s world.

Cars, that is, the vehicles that we use for getting around from home, to the grocery store, to school, have become crucial to the transportation means of several individuals.

Despite cars being essential to transportation, the ability to use cars as a means for myself, friends and other students to get to school, as commuters, has been taken away from us. Thanks to the ill purposeful parking enforcements of Public Safety.

It all can be understood through the parking situation with which I just dealt.

To begin my situation, that is, what Public Safety did to my car, they banned it from campus at the end of last fall 2012 semester as a result of accumulating 5 tickets, which I can understand and am ok with having done. It was my fault for not parking in the proper areas or during the proper times to get those five tickets.

I only worsened my situation by failing to meet up Public Safety due to my busy schedule, as a result of still driving to the campus I still received tickets for trespassing from the start of the spring semester up until a few weeks ago. At which point, I not only received trespassing tickets, I also had my vehicle towed from campus to the lot of Cross Country Automotive, the company through which the University has an exclusive towing contract.

With the situation reaching the point to where I accumulated 12 tickets and had my car towed at least 4 times in the span of two weeks, I finally visited Public Safety.

To no surprise, they explained to me that because I have amassed 12 tickets, that even if I was to pay a reinstatement fee, which would wipe clean the first five tickets I got, I would still have my car banned, as with seven tickets remaining after the first five were wiped, I would reach a 5 point limit and be banned again.

With only being allowed to pay one reinstatement fee, reaching a maximum ticket count of 5 tickets twice, while still having two tickets left over, because of my continuous putting off of talking to Public Safety, I am not allowed to have a vehicle on campus at all. Ever.

However, although I accept it, I do not agree with it, which is why I feel the need to voice my opinion about it. My way of getting to school has been deprived of me. I am a commuter student that drives my car to get to school, and I have paid all my tickets. I have to be able to attend classes and graduate, but I can’t risk more tickets and towings.

In the middle of the semester, I am forced to find a new way of getting to and from school.

Other students who have been placed in similar situations and can no longer have a vehicle on campus at all, despite being commuters, have shared similar disagreements about such policies. Even a mother of students here has reached out to me about her parking dissatisfaction as well and gone as far to contact Public Safety herself.

They provided her with a letter, which she in turn provided to me, which in part reads: “With the large number of vehicles on campus at any given time during the business and academic day, it requires several rules being put in place to maximize the availability of parking spaces. Our parking enforcement efforts are designed to gain voluntary compliance with parking regulations. We strive for consistency in our enforcement efforts and offer a fair appeal process for those cited. Our department continues to evaluate the parking policies every year to ensure that they are fair, efficient and enforceable. They are updated as required.”

I think it’s great that Public Safety attempts to gain voluntary compliance with parking regulations by making students to learn that you must follow the rules the hard way, but what about when those parking enforcement efforts inhibit a student’s ability to attain the education they pay for and merit?

When they do, those parking enforcement efforts may deprive a student’s ability to benefit from his or her education. Since parking infractions in the “real world” in life beyond colleges and universities may impose fees on individuals, but never prohibit or restrict an individual to carry out the responsibilities they have, such as Public Safety has done here, what is the lesson to be learned here?

Since there is no instances of this in the “real world” what preparation for the real world is this providing, since that ultimately is what colleges and universities are for, correct?

If I am aware of the situation, have paid all of my tickets and am willing to continue to get ticketed and towed for having my car on campus and pay the fines that result from such, if it means being able to drive my car to campus and receive the education I am paying for, as I please, why can’t I be allowed to do so?

I know it may be ridiculous to do such a thing, but that is my decision if I want to do it or not. It should not be Public Safety’s as it is now, which has put my peers and I in a situation that forces us to change our ability to receive the education we pay for.