With on-campus parking tickets costing $75 and up, Miami University Parking Services can quickly take the top slot on any student's hate list. We've all parked somewhere we shouldn't have, purposefully or ignorantly, at one time or another. We come back to our cars and become frustrated, yet we still understand it was our own fault and we had it coming to us.
But we've all also parked somewhere we shouldn't have or didn't pay the meter quite enough – just for those five minutes. Those five minutes to return a video camera to King Library we used for a group project, to drop a form off at the Campus Avenue Building or turn in a paper to a professor. In our futile attempts to hope that Parking Services has a human soul or some form of compassion, we might turn our hazard lights on or scribble a quick note we frantically put on our dashboard, pleading that they don't ticket us in just those five minutes. Yet it always ends the same: that little white, receipt-like paper is there, tucked underneath your windshield wiper, fluttering occasionally in the wind almost as though it is waving to you, mocking you. Whether you shout it out immediately or just start to mutter it under your breath, the swearing begins. All the mind-splitting headaches and unbearable meetings you endured to finish your group project – now all for nothing. The countless hours you spent researching, writing, re-writing, editing and formatting your paper – down the drain. For just five minutes, no matter how hard you worked, how good your reason was, Parking Services made sure that no one, including you, gets a break, because everyone must have the right pass or pay the meter the right amount.
On Thursday, I pulled into a metered parking spot behind Shriver Center. It was for blue, green and red passes only. I had a blue pass and I had some quarters, I was all set. And while student teaching created a marked spike in the amount of money I spend on gas each week, severely crippling my already anemic bank account, I was begrudgingly prepared to cough up the annoying quarters to be able to park there for a while. Really? Blue and up parking that is also metered? As I pulled in, I saw a somewhat older gentleman get out of the car next to me, which had only finished parking moments before. I got out of my car and grabbed my backpack from the back seat. Closing my door, I saw him mosey towards some of the cars parked closer to the Shriver building. Then I saw it: a small paper pad in his back pocket, a pencil behind his ear, and that machine that print tickets in his hand. He was from Parking Services. Knowing I needed to be on my way, I focused my attention back and quickly put my quarters in. The "00:00" stopped flashing and "02:00" appeared on the meter. I slung my backpack over my shoulder, locked my car, and walked away.
However, as I left, I happened to look at the meter for his parking space. The time was expired. "00:00" was flashing on the screen. He hadn't paid a nickel.
Certainly, he would only be in the lot for just five minutes or so. It wasn't a big lot, so it wouldn't take him all that long to go around and check to make sure everyone had the right pass or had paid the meter enough. But that's just it. Not only is it a small lot with limited parking, but now his car was also taking up one of those prized and rare spaces on campus where students can park – students who might be parking there longer than just five minutes. Students who are already laden with piles of coursework and projects to do and hours of work at someplace uptown to pay Miami University's exorbitant tuition.
If Parking Services did not ticket like it does or have such expensive fines, illegal parking would be rampant on this beautiful campus, where parking is already so limited. It is necessary to the functioning of the university.
I understand that the man had a job to do and that it would take him just five minutes to do it at that parking lot. But as it stands right now, being a student is my job and sometimes I may need to park somewhere for just five minutes and may not have the money to pay the meter. Yet time and time again, it is the student, who is already severely strapped for money, who must pay the extraordinary $75 fine as punishment. When the man who gives out these soul-crushing punishments breaches the same policy that is applicable to the student yet faces no consequence, he has entirely lost my respect.
"But it was just for five minutes," we say in our appeals and pleas to Parking Services. "It doesn't matter if you were there for five minutes or for whatever reason, good or not," retorts Parking Services, "it is a matter of principle."
So I say to you today Parking Services, it is a matter of principle. I am fully aware I'm arguing 25 cents with you. It's chump-change, really. But as Americans and free citizens of this world, we believe in a higher law, that no one is above the law – including those who enforce it. When you are crippling students' finances with $75 fines on a daily basis, the least you could do is put a quarter in your own meter. Even if it's just for five minutes. As you say, it's a matter of principle.
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