By Pascale Ngo

For those who did not live on campus over the summer, move-over from summer housing to fall housing took place on a Sunday morning three weeks ago.You would think that beating the rush of returning students moving in during Labor Day weekend would have made move-over a breeze for me. However, a mishap with my car proved otherwise.

After moving and taking care of some errands with a friend, I ended up parking my car in the New Complex parking lot that afternoon.

Since I was very busy with my summer job with the Department of Student Leadership and Activities, I didn’t think about my car until four days later when I needed it to move a fridge into my room. The following Thursday, I came out of the Student Center around 9 p.m. and looked for my car where I had left it. I walked around in the parking lot a bit since I didn’t remember exactly where I had parked it. To my surprise, the car was nowhere to be found. I called my friend, Lauren, and told her that I couldn’t find my car. We kind of laughed about it, because, hey, people forget where they park all the time.

I then decided to walk over to the Liberty/Republic parking lot, where I live. I checked the cars there, but no such luck. So I walked back to the New Complex parking lot; maybe my eyes tricked me and my car would be staring me in the face. But when I got there, my car was still nowhere in sight. I called Lauren again and we attempted to mentally retrace where I had parked during move-over that Sunday. I began to doubt I had parked my car in the New Complex parking lot in the first place.

An hour or so later, I decide to call Public Safety to ask if any car had possibly been towed, something I wouldn’t have thought about doing if it weren’t for another friend’s suggestion. The officer checked some paperwork and told me that yes, my car had in fact been towed. Cars had been towed to clear the parking lot for freshmen move-in day. However, there was another problem-I needed to give him my license plate number to ensure that it was my car. Now, I don’t know about everyone else, but I don’t know the number off the top of my head. So I asked if I could give him my driver’s license number for him to look up my University vehicle registration card instead, but for some reason, he said that he couldn’t. I then started crying, as the officer didn’t really say anything to make the situation any easier. Trying to think quickly, I said I would call him back with my license plate number. After some searching, I successfully found my license plate number. I called Public Safety again and spoke to the same officer. My license plate matched the car that had been towed! It was my car! They had my car! He said it had been towed to another parking lot but that the paperwork didn’t say to which parking lot it had been towed. So I asked the officer what I should then do to be able to find my car. He told me to go outside of the Liberty/Republic housing complex to wait for a Public Safety officer to drive over and assist me.

So I went outside to wait. And wait. Finally, I saw a Public Safety vehicle, but it wasn’t even coming for me. They passed me and I decided to run after and tell the two officers my story. Mind you, my face was still red from crying earlier. The two Public Safety Officers told me to hop in and that they were going to help me find my car (they were very helpful, unlike the one I spoke to on the phone).

They immediately radioed the Public Safety office and spoke with an officer who shall remain nameless (probably the same one who made me cry over the phone). The two officers told the one in the office that I wasw with them in the car and asked him if he can pull out any more information on where my car could be. The response was, again, no. So helpful, right? Long story short, the University got a new tow person, but apparently this new person did not write down where he towed my car. My car was eventually found at 12:30 a.m., in the Enterprise parking lot.

What I don’t understand is why it took so long to find my car. In any case, this whole fiasco could have been prevented. Isn’t this one of the very reasons students register their cars with Public Safety? On the day they decided to tow my car, they could have taken down my license plate number, looked it up in their database to see who it belonged to and notified me. I would have gladly moved my car if I had known they needed to clear the lot.

This experience showed an extreme lack of organization on the Department of Public Safety’s part and reflects very poorly on the University as a whole.

Pascale Ngo is a senior mathematics student. You may e-mail her at pngo1@pride.hofstra.edu.