Parking anarchy: The parking saga continuesRachel Fauber 19 November 2009 [Online Editors’ Note: This article was published in The Towerlight on 19 November 2009 (p. 5). While the author might not be herself a libertarian, we felt this article may be of interest to libertarian student readers, and thus are including it here.] Towson University has a new fire truck on campus and it happens to look remarkably like President Robert Caret’s car.
What appeared to be the president’s car (hereby referred to as the 0001) was parked in a clearly marked fire lane and no-parking zone in between Smith Hall and Van Bokkelen Hall around 6 p.m. Tuesday. Now, maybe I’m being a parking shark, maybe I’m just a square, or maybe I just don’t understand the parking habits of the high and mighty, but to me, parking in a fire lane is definitely against the rules. Are there special circumstances that allow for an individual to park in a fire lane or no-parking zone? Maybe. But another member of our staff saw the 0001 in the same spot an hour earlier. Maybe there was an extended emergency. The other peculiar thing I just can’t shake is that the staff member who saw the car around 5 p.m. saw a parking and transportation staff member standing near the vehicle. In response to the handicap-parking mix-up earlier in the week, director of parking and transportation services Pamela Mooney e-mailed me and wrote “all staff are trained and instructed that they must set the example for the campus community.” That’s good to know. I hope the staff member by the 0001 had just stuck a yellow envelope under the wipers. In the end those handicap spaces in the Union Garage turned out just to have been mislabeled. They were covered up with black paint the evening after the editorial came out. So maybe the fire lanes (where the 0001 was parked) weren’t actually fire lanes. Maybe the “no-parking” signs were just in the wrong place. Maybe we should just take the lines and lanes off ALL the roads on campus. Paint over everything in black. Parking anarchy. |
The day after my editorial was published regarding a parking and transportation services vehicle parked in what appeared to be a handicap space, one of our editors caught another parking faux pas on campus.