As all of you may or may not know, Parking Services will be bringing back one of their favorite pastimes, Booting. Booting is the act of placing this monstrous lock on one of the wheels of your car with the only way of removing it being that Parking come and remove it upon payment of a boot fee ($125) and the fee of the tickets. This decision was actually supported by the SA Senate and approved by both the city of Rochester and the University.
Now some of you may ask “Well, is booting a necessary evil? Or simply another way for the University to hold us by the ankles and shake all of us free of our money?” Well, with the idea that Parking really has no way to enforce the payment of tickets or the constant repeat offender who takes up spots, many would agree that it is necessary. However, I feel that there are always more ways than one to solve a problem and just feel like another agreement can be reached that would not only help the “starving student” but also benefit the University. Ultimately parking has spiraled out of control, the Parking Office has given their “Parking Officers” the right to ticket… and do they ever ticket. Moving into your new room? Ticket. Dropping something off? Ticket. Running inside somewhere to pick up something? Ticket. It seems impossible to leave your car anywhere for anything without receiving a ticket.
So some of you may be asking, “How can we fix this? How can we help to make this solution help both parties?” Well here’s the thing: there have been attempts to create focus groups, but unfortunately they have been somewhat unsuccessful. However, there may still be a way to change, or at least assuage some of the problems, another group will be meeting on March 23, quite possibly too little too late, although it may prove beneficial.
Take it from someone who has many tickets — this is truly getting ridiculous and everyone should get involved.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Cody // Mar 17, 2009 at 11:12 am
I feel like penalties are necessary to some extent — some students park wherever they feel like, whenever they feel like it, and cause these sorts of strong punishments for those of us who pay to park and follow the rules.
On the other hand, this environment has been created where parking is viewed as an evil entity (I share in that belief) who are simply out to nab you the second you step away from your vehicle. I am not sure what can be done about this, but I feel like parking has a lot of changing to do.
My first issue is the cost of parking on campus — $350 for a year? Sure, in the “real world” parking can be expensive, but at the same time, neighboring Nazareth College charges $40 for a year! This kind of stuff is just another way to suck us of money to run a department that we wouldn’t need if they didn’t charge so much, and thus students didn’t feel the need to disregard the rules to stick it to the man…
2 Jess King // Mar 18, 2009 at 8:55 pm
I think that the parking office has good reason to bring back booting - I personally owe them about $800 - but at the same time, I think that the parking on campus is done in one of the dumbest ways possible. I was living in towers and I had to park in GLC. Why can’t they just say “this is where faculty members can park, this is where students can park” and have a free for all? And serriously, if we’re paying $45000 to go here, why can’t they put some of that towards parking? Saying it’s because “not everybody parks on campus” is stupid. They give money from out tuition to the SA and not everybody is involved in SA funded things. I absolutely loathe how incredibly stupidly parking is done. And why can’t they have 15 minute parking that’s actually long enough to get something done? like 30 or 45 minute parking? I hate the parking office and just feel horribly hostile whenever I think about it. The parking office sucks ass and I want them to stop being so fucking stupid.
3 John G. Roman III // Mar 18, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Actually Jess, we pay almost 53,000 now before aid is given…so it is that much more ridiculous.
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