Parking on a bureaucratic mess

Two officers were standing nearby, so I went to explain the situation, but they insisted, with unnecessary belligerence, that I needed to have a pass regardless of what the other officer had said. The futility of protest was obvious, so I merely requested that Public Safety coordinate better to avoid similar incidents in the future. This also seemed too complicated a request, so I dropped it. Clearly, were I to ever ignore an order of a Public Safety officer, the University would initiate dreadful disciplinary measures. Instead, there I was, completely helpless, being punished for having done exactly what I had been told to do.

Then, a few weeks ago, my grandfather died, and I rushed to Brooklyn for the funeral. I rushed back the next morning to lead a precept and pack up for the remainder of the week, which I would be spending with my family. Knowing that cars are not allowed on campus during the day, yet not having time before my precept to go back and forth to the student lot (Lot 23), I parked in Lot 6, which is fairly close to my dorm in Whitman. Though most of that lot is reserved for staff, I dutifully parked in a spot marked “2-Hour Parking — University Decals Only, Except 6 and 7.”

Within a half-hour, I had received a $40 parking ticket for “Visitor Space Abuse.”

At the parking office, I explained that there is no way for students to know that they are forbidden to park in those spots. The very fact that the sign specifically excludes decals for lots 6 and 7 would lead any reasonable observer to conclude that decals for Lot 23 are fine. Clearly, if the parking office wanted to exclude students, the sign would say “Except 6, 7 and 23.” I knew, of course, that we can’t bring cars on campus during the day, but that seemed to be the reason for the two-hour parking exception.

There happened to have been a Public Safety officer nearby when I returned to my car to find the ticket, but she did not know why I had been ticketed. When I mentioned this story to a friend later on, he told me that a Public Safety officer had once explicitly told him that students could park there. If the signs are too misleading and the rules too opaque for the people charged with enforcing them, surely it is unreasonable to hold students accountable.

The good news is that the parking office informed me of my right to appeal. The bad news is that they also told me that there was no point in exercising it. Obviously, the hallmark of any fair justice system is being told you’re going to lose before they’ve even heard your case. Even better, they impose an extra fine for denied appeals, presumably to discourage students from challenging the Parking Nazi (“No spot for you!”). After the woman at the front desk checked with her superiors about my right to appeal, she reported that the boss, in frustration over the repeated occurrence of such violations, said she’d put up a giant sign if that was necessary in order to spell out all the restrictions and exceptions. So be it. Apparently, in their own perverse way, even they recognize that the signs are unclear.

One would think that the recurrence of this issue would already have clued them in on the fact that there is a problem. But instead we students face a perfect storm of pettiness, laziness, incompetence and stupidity. All we can do is rage against an impersonal and uncaring bureaucracy, with no recourse approaching anything that resembles justice or fairness.

The ironic epilogue to the story is that, before my appeal was even considered, the ticket was canceled — not because I won on the merits, but because the officer wrote the wrong violation on the ticket. Alas, defeated by their own blundering.

Though the 80-minute delay between reports of a gunman near Spelman Halls and notification of the campus will be remembered more prominently among “Great Moments in Public Safety,” the real threat on our tranquil campus is not one crazy Stalin wielding a Kalashnikov but a thousand little Stalins, conducting show-trials for crimes never committed — and, in the process, destroying our quality of life.

Daniel Mark ’03 is a graduate student in politics from Englewood, N.J. He can be reached at dmark@princeton.edu.