Recently UNI Parking told me that anyone who does not have an adequate parking pass can leave their car in the CP parking lot for months without getting towed. They told me that their own rules on parking and towing don’t matter in the CP lot. They told me this not in person, but through their actions when a car was allowed to remain parked in CP for over two months without an adequate parking pass. 

I have seen a car parked in the same CP parking spot for over two months without a valid parking pass. To be fair it actually had not moved since at least April, but it had a CP pass from last school year. At one point, it was allowed to be parked there. I saw it there week after week, getting ticket after ticket, without being towed. 

UNI Parking knew it was there. The car would have a new ticket on it every two to three days, but they did not tow it. The car had so many tickets someone from Parking had to move all the tickets into one envelope just so they could put more tickets on it. Twice. At one point, the car had over 15 tickets.

According to UNI Public Safety’s rules on towing, a car may be towed if it: has five or more unpaid parking tickets, is parked illegally, is parked illegally for over eight hours, has been abandoned for over 24 hours or if they have over 10 tickets total (Parking Manual, Section 8.6). 

This car had obviously broken all of those rules. Myself and another Shull RA emailed Parking to ask about this car and they told us that the car was abandoned and would be towed. That was over two weeks (mid-October) before the car was actually taken on Halloween. 

Having been on campus for four years, I have seen UNI Parking tow cars for much less. Any car parked in an A, G or B lot would be towed after being parked there less than two days. This leaves me to wonder: why the discrepancy? Why does CP, the lot in which people living on campus park their cars, receive less respect than other lots? 

This is not the first time something like this has happened. Last winter, a car in CP parked right in front of a sidewalk (where parking is prohibited) and my dorm window for a week. This car was obviously not parked correctly but was also not towed. Ask any student who has lived on campus for a year and they probably have a story of a car that blatantly broke parking rules without consequence. 

Not only was Parking not towing the car, they weren’t ticketing the car correctly. Almost every student has had the experience of getting an unwanted ticket after parking for only a short time, possibly even getting multiple tickets in one day. This car should have been ticketed everyday. 

According to their rules, Parking tickets for illegal parking may be issued once per eight hour shift (Parking Manual, Section 9.2). This car was only ticketed every two to four days. This showed the students passing by this car everyday that Parking knew the car was there, breaking their rules, but didn’t care enough to tow it or even ticket it correctly. 

As a senior, it can be easy to be cynical about things on campus that go wrong. I love UNI and I hate cynicism, so I try to look at the good on campus. 

This Parking debacle has left me with nothing but sadness. It shows me that Parking only cares about the money it makes from tickets and students on campus don’t matter. 

They will move a car if it affects those who travel to campus, but the 4,000 students who live on campus are out of luck. I can understand not towing a car for a week or two, but after two months? It’s hard not to be cynical.