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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 2004
Parking department should rethink strategy
I knew it was going to be a bad day before it even began. It all started the day before, studying and stressing over a test that would occur in the following 24 hours. My studying spilled over into the early morning hours accompanied by the faint sound of rain and the occasional crack of lightning and roar of thunder.
I decided to check the forecast for the day: chance of storms. I wasn't going to take my chances, this time I was going to outsmart Mother Nature.
The last time the forecast called for a chance of storms I found myself stranded on campus with no way to get home except walk. With every step I sank deeper and deeper into the ground with no easy way out. By the time I did manage to escape this hungry, ugly monster, I had one broken flip flop, feet covered in mud and pants nicely decorated with mud.
By the time I did get home, my tennis shoes had turned into squishy-squashy water shoes, my whole semester of notes became illegible, and I am still in the process of unsticking all 1,185 pages of my textbook.
This time I wasn't going to have a repeat of my previous incident. Plus, I figured the Sprint company would start to get just a little bit suspicious when I came in with my second phone in less than two weeks that for some odd reason, unbeknownst to me, wouldn't turn on anymore.
So, I decided to drive my car to class. Getting to my car though, proved to be quite the challenge. I didn't think much about crossing the construction to get to my car, that is until I realized that the construction mud had mixed with the early morning rain to create a horrible man-eating mud.
I parked my car at exactly 9 a.m. and knew that all I had to do was get through my test and maybe my day might start to look a little brighter. Walking back to my car a few hours later, there it was. Tucked ever so snugly under my windshield wipers was that infamous little pink envelope, courtesy of the University of Kansas Parking Department.
perspective
The first thing I noticed on the ticket was the time — 9:08 a.m. I am now thoroughly convinced the parking department hides in the bushes eagerly waiting to ambush unsuspecting victims. In my opinion, the parking department serves a great duty to the University community. They gladly take your car off your hands for as long as you like and keep it in a safe place until you decide that you would like it back. They do a wonderful job of encouraging school spirit with a different parking sticker or hang tag for nearly every parking lot. They make sure that everyone has their fair share at a parking spot by overselling permits by
Melissa Shippy
opinion@kansan.com
The first thing I noticed on the ticket was the time 9:08 a.m. I am now thoroughly convinced the parking department hides in the bushes eagerly waiting to ambush unsuspecting victims.
the hundreds, forcing many games of chicken to unfold within student lots. And they are an exemplary model of efficiency and promptness when it comes to taking other people's money. I fear that our University would be in a state of shambles if it were not for the parking department.
The only question that I have for the parking department is why it has to take students' money. Isn't it enough that we
all fork out thousands of dollars every year just to be here? Aren't student tuition dollars going to pay those wonderful parking department employees who write the tickets and the little pink envelopes they come in anyway?
Here is my proposal to the parking department — exempt every student from all parking tickets and, to make up for the millions of dollars in lost revenue charge everyone else double.
Wouldn't all employees of the parking department be filled with endless amounts of warm fuzzies inside knowing that students would no longer suffer from hunger pangs because they spent every last penny paying a parking ticket? Wouldn't the parking department be satisfied knowing that they would be taking more from the rich while at the same time helping the poor? Wouldn't the campus be a much more enjoyable place for both students and parking department employees if students knew it wasn't lurking behind every bus and parking meter. Wouldn't it be nice if the parking department knew that students did not have such disdain for these employees who, in their words, work "in the best interests of the total University?"
Shippy is Wichita sophomore in political science, international studies and pre-med