I fought the parking officials and I won

Everyone knows that parking sucks on campus. Find out how to beat the system and make sure you can always find a space and get to class.

By Joe Alewine

You hear a lot of bitching, these days, about the parking situation on campus. When I went through orientation four years ago, the administrators took no small glee in calling parking passes a “license to look.” They also giggled that the university has sold about one and a half decals for every available space.

I remember being vaguely annoyed by that, even though I didn’t have a car. And remember being even more annoyed when I got a car and moved a few miles away from campus, because the only passes available to me cost $90 (now $94) and only got you as far as the commuter lot, where you would still need to ride a bus to get anywhere useful.

Of course, I could take a bus from my apartment for free, and that’s what I did for a while, even though I found it to be a foul, unreliable way to travel. But when the summer rolled around and the campus thinned out, I decided to test out a few things that had occurred to me on those long, terrible rides.

Scheme 1: The rotation boogie

It seemed obvious to me that there are a finite number of parking enforcement twits on campus at any given time, and like anyone who has a number of repetitive tasks to get to, they’d probably check them more or less the same time every day. This suggested to me the possibility that there were gaps in the enforcement at each parking lot at certain times of day. And given a little luck, you could probably get in and get out without getting tagged.

So that’s what I did. I’d follow their little pathetic car up North South Drive and up to the parking lot across from the Reitz Union (which in those days had metered parking), and if the timing hadn’t worked out right I’d put a single, lonely quarter in the machine and get two or three hours out of it. On balance, it worked beautifully. I got just one ticket that whole summer, and given the fact that a parking pass would have cost me $90, $20 (the cost of the ticket) was a pittance by comparison.

Of course, that was until I realized I was…

Scheme 2: The un-finable man

It never occurred to me when I got the Florida Bright Futures scholarship that it would be a useful tool in bending the rules. But when I got that ticket that summer, I went and did what I usually do in that situation: nothing.

Which was great, for me. I had all kinds of other things ot do. But when registration rolled around, it suddenly occurred to me that I might have a hold on my records, which would prevent me form registering on time, which would mean I wouldn’t get he classes I needed, and blah blah blah.

So I hurried up and drank a beer. Eventually, though, I checked ISIS and found: nothing. The ticket wasn’t there. I was puzzled at first, and then it occurred to me that my mom had paid it. But she told me she hadn’t, and suddenly it was clear Bright Futures had paid for it.

So it’s a little known fact, which I’m revealing now, the Bright Futures (at least, the 100 % version, which I have), doesn’t bother with only your tuition. It settles your whole account. So when you’re lazy enough not to pay your tickets, a fine is added and placed on your account. And if it’s there long enough, Bright Futures will pick it up.

Scheme 3: The old in-out, in-out

This took a good deal of the financial pressure off. All that was left was to avoid getting so many tickets the parking goons would find the need to tow my car. So it was with great delight that I pulled into the brand new Reitz Union parking garage to find they has sectioned off 255 of the 300 parking spaces for all-day parking. Almost immediately, it occurred to me id someone paid for the whole day and left, their space was as ripe for the picking as a Georgia peach.

Figuring out if somebody has parked in a spot was a fairly easy matter, and since I’d scheduled my classes in the afternoon, after people who’ve has three hour blocks in the morning, and thus are the most likely to pay $5 per-day parking, has left, it’s pretty much like shooting fish in a barrel.

So there it is. Somebody left the doors open and I walked through them. I’ve got to say I take a certain amount of pleasure in parking where I want and not having to pay for it. If the busses ran more reliably and teachers weren’t so rigidly sophomoric as to penalize people for being late to a class they paid for, maybe I would think differently. Or not. And it some fascist reads this and closes some loophole, I’ll think of others. I couldn’t be less intimidated by your intellectual powers.

For now, though, I’ll just enjoy the ride.