The parking lots. Hamline has eleven and it is getting harder to find a spot to park in any of them. We all know that you need a parking permit to park in any lot from 8am to 8pm Monday through Thursday and 8am to 4pm on Fridays. You do not need a permit to park on the weekends or overnight.

A recent issue we have with this system is how people without parking permits are filling up the parking lots without repercussions and then the people who do have a parking permit can not find a spot, no matter the time of day. So one can not help but to ask; why get a parking permit if you won’t get ticketed?

For the students that live on campus, you are paying the 200 dollar fee so you do not have to move your car from 8am to 8pm Monday through Thursday and 8am to 4pm on Fridays, but with our recent investigation nobody is getting ticketed for not having a permit. People have parked here all year without a permit and the lots are filling up because of it. If it’s not going to be enforced then why have parking permits to begin with?  The parking policy page on Hamline’s website says a parking permit does not guarantee a parking spot, so again what’s the point of getting a permit if you won’t have a place to park.

Why can’t the two biggest lots on campus be first come first serve? The reason for a permit makes sense to some capacity for faculty and staff to have a place to park but they usually get to campus early enough in the morning that parking lots have not filled up yet. But for everyone else, first come first serve seems like the easiest way to handle this issue.

Another issue we have with the parking lots is the inconsistency in ticketing violators of the parking policies. Like we mentioned in the above paragraphs, people without parking permits are not getting ticketed if they are still parking in the lots, and if they do get ticketed many students admit to just throwing those tickets away.

In the parking lot, ticketing cars only happens every once in a blue moon, as if cars only receive tickets when there is nothing else for an officer to do.

For instance, a fellow student received a ticket for overnight parking. The student had a parking permit (which is not needed to park overnight) but was parked in the second row closest to the Law School. The student received a ticket because he/she needed to be parked one row further south to qualify for permitted overnight parking. (This row doesn’t have a sign saying permitted overnight parking either, but vehicles don’t get ticketed there so it must be permitted…who knows for sure.).

Inconsistent ticketing becomes frustrating when the next night that student goes to park in the permitted row, and sees there are a number of cars parked overnight where he/she received his/her ticket.

Why should someone pay his/her ticket when other cars are doing the same thing and just get lucky that safety and security is not ticketing that day. It doesn’t make sense to ticket just a few. As it stands, a simple warning would send the same message as a 30 dollar ticket.

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