Driving us to the brink, the Oberlin parking saga

When I think of the parking situation in Oberlin, it makes me reflect. Usually my specific reflections are along the lines of “What is the matter with these people?” This is mainly because nothing about the current system makes any sense at all.
To begin, we can look at registered parking. When a student brings a car to the college at the beginning of the year they pay their $60 to security and get a little sticker, which they assume entitles them to park in a student space. What these students do not realize is that Security issues about 2,000 stickers to students who end up vying for 30 spaces, all of which are taken the first day of school by cars that apparently die there and are never moved again.
What really irks me about this situation is the fact that it could be so easily solved. The one thing we have in complete abundance is space. We are in the middle of cornfields for crying out loud! Isn’t it at all possible to just make another parking lot somewhere? I am sure that there are a few small houses somewhere that the college could buy and turn into a student parking lot. Or maybe we could sacrifice one of our perpetually empty tennis courts.
Another issue is that everyone seems to have a car here. I can understand that a car gives a sense of freedom to people, but since there is obviously a problem, let’s just reduce the number of cars. As a senior, I vote to take the privilege from the freshmen. I mean, how are we supposed to create a close-knit environment of students if the freshmen are always off campus? Plus, there really isn’t any reason for them to drive. They have everything they need either right here in Oberlin or within the reach of public transportation. The only reason anyone needs a car is to buy alcohol in Wellington, which the freshmen can’t do anyways. Problem solved.
Of course, the parking space availability issue is not the only problem in Oberlin. Another major problem is parking enforcement, both by the college and by the town. To say that nothing these groups do parking-wise increases our safety or security is an understatement.
First, we have the standard procedure for an on-campus parking violation. Let’s say that a student has not registered his/her car, but has parked in a student space. When security notices this, they spring into action and issue a ticket. Then, if the student doesn’t move, they get a second and third ticket. The car will then be booted for several days before it is towed. So basically, instead of getting rid of cars that are illegally taking up student parking spaces, security leaves them there for over a week, perhaps to generate more tickets from the registered students who cannot find a space.
Now while the above is standard procedure, we also have the special procedures, which are administered sporadically throughout the year. Chief among these is the random ticket patrol, a crack unit that wanders around campus and cites any car they feel like. The underlying premise is that students will be so overburdened with academic work that they will just pay the ticket without a thought, instead of stopping to see if it is warranted.
To prove this is true, I will relate a personal anecdote. A friend of mine recently got a ticket for parking in a registered student space. When she brought the ticket to the security office and pointed out that she was in the space because she was a registered student, the officer shrugged and tore up the ticket.
While I do not wish to sound like a victim here, I must admit that I have also been hit by the random ticket patrol. While parked in a space in a student lot, I received a ticket for not being parked in a legal space. When I asked Security about the problem, I was informed that the space was not legal because the lines were marked in yellow paint instead of white paint, which was an Ohio law. So imagine my surprise when I returned to the lot and noticed that all of the spaces were indeed marked in yellow paint. So far, security has not responded to this problem, since the ticket appeal process is severely backed up due to more pressing concerns, such as ticket writing.
I don’t mean to say that the problem rests solely with campus safety and security staff. The local laws and police force have their own special place in the parking annoyances. One of the more annoying is the 48 hour law. Simply put, you cannot park on the street in the same place for more than 48 hours.
This law still has me baffled. Is this for the benefit of the homeowners, whose lives are so boring that their only form of entertainment is to see different cars park in front of their house? Or does the police station get kickbacks from the gas stations by ensuring that students cannot save money and gas by walking more often?
Maybe there is some factor that I am completely overlooking that would explain the whole thing; perhaps the police found out that if two cars are next to each other long enough they will start plotting a mutiny against their human oppressors, and the constant moving of cars prevents the formation of detailed plots.
Unfortunately, the 48-hour rule takes a far second to the king of all annoyances and inconveniences. The undisputed champion is of course the snow ban. For those of you who have been at Oberlin for about 10 minutes and have not heard, the snow ban is a rule that prevents cars from being parked on the street from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. during the winter. This ban serves the purpose of letting the town not plow the streets between 2am and 6am, instead waiting until all of the cars return to the street after 6:00 so that they may be covered in slush. The snow ban is of course the problem behind all of the other problems. Unfortunately, this means that it will never go away, because it would devastate the annoyance hierarchy and prevent students from being separated from their money.
So is there any hope for the drivers of Oberlin? Who will end up winning this perpetual battle? The students? Security? The cops? I personally am rooting for the cars.

—Eric Murphy