By Brian Bohl
You circle around the lot, hoping a rare parking spot will pop out and spare you the hassle of walking the extra three minutes from the car to the Student Center entrance. Then you realize the spot isn’t free; a motorcycle or compact resides in that spot, elongating your amaranthine journey down the lot.
On the south side of campus, the constant roaming for an elusive space is even more pronounced. University students will seemingly do anything within and even beyond legal limits to avoid adding walking to their daily activities. It’s a difficult task to discern the arcanum of commuters’ mindset.
Reticence towards walking is so pronounced, students habitually will simply create parking spaces out of asphalt previously reserved for (gasp) traffic to move into and out of the lot. Hey, when a space doesn’t exist, all it takes sometimes is a little ingenuity to instantly create new openings by parking outside those hard-to-miss yellow lines.
Most drivers acquired their learners’ permits by knowing that parking outside of yellow lines is illegal and dangerous. Yet Stephen Cooney’s story last week about a surge in on-campus parking tickets revealed that students, faculty and staff could still use a refresher in basic parking laws.
“If you are going to give tickets, be consistent about it,” freshman Mallory Hanback said. “Sometimes they give tickets and sometimes they don’t.”
But the absence of a ticket doesn’t mean the illegal act is condoned. Every day, think about the thousands of vehicles blowing through red lights or stop signs. There will never be enough law enforcement personnel to ticket every single violation. If an individual doesn’t get pulled over for speeding, that doesn’t mean it’s legal to drive 90 miles per hour. It just means an officer wasn’t around with a radar gun. The act is always illegal.
The students parking outside the yellow lines obviously know it’s not a spot. By getting accepted into an institute of higher learning, one usually possesses the capacity to understand that the hundreds of cars you see already in the lot didn’t park far away simply to minimize your particular traveling time.
Try using the Hofstra students’ logic in a different scenario. You get pulled over for driving at night without turning on the lights. When informed of this dangerous act, you tell the officer, “I drove without my lights last night, and no one said anything. Be consistent with tickets.” You might inspire laughter from the officer, an extra ticket, or both. It’s an illogical sentiment.
Parking outside the yellow lines is not only dangerous for motorists exiting the parking lot, it is also unfair to the ones who park legally. The drivers who follow the rules shouldn’t be forced to walk a farther distance than someone who arrived late but just feels lazy and/or entitled.
It would be nice if Public Safety caught every illegally parked car every time. According to Cooney’s story, over 1,000 more tickets have already been dispensed this year compared to 2007.
Illegal parking spots aren’t the worst things to happen on campus. But how many times have you heard a friend complain about their car getting scratched or bumped in the parking lot? Illegally parked cars make already-narrow turns even more conducive to accidents by preventing motorists from completing turns or making it more difficult to move over to avoid oncoming traffic. There are plenty of spaces for everyone. Just bring your headphones with you and some comfortable shoes.
As a side note, this will be my last column for The Chronicle. Before I graduate in two weeks, I would like to offer my gratitude to my two editorial editors, Tiffany Ayuda and Emilia Benton, for all their hard work. In my four years at the paper, I’ve seen a monumental increase in quantity and quality in all facets. The Chronicle is producing more pages of content per week than ever before, and the numerous Newsday and New York Press Association awards validate the efforts of all the editors and staff. My congratulations go out to Tejal Patel, our esteemed editor-in-chief.
I’ve enjoyed the privilege of writing for every section of the paper since I joined in the fall of 2004. With the presidential debate coming to campus next year and the national spotlight soon to shine on Hofstra, I know The Chronicle will only continue to improve.
Brian Bohl is a senior print journalism student. You may e-mail him at bbohl1@pride.hofstra.edu.
