So last week there was an email sent to Auburn students about Auburn’s parking situation, and some of the students whose opinions dot our timeline were absolutely losing their Twit. Lots of cussing and thinly-veiled threats… it had something to do with higher prices, but fewer spaces or something… and something about fro-yo. I don’t know specifics. But I do know that, generationally speaking, y’all are not alone.
Parking has been a problem on Auburn’s campus forever. And ever. And ever. Gripes about parking were as prevalent in The Plainsman in the 1950s as cigarette ads, as numerous in the 70s as skin flick specials. Ditto the 90s. And the complaints typically doubled as accusations that students were being bilked in a bad-parking-is-good-business kind of way. Despite the recent arrival of Tiger Transit—or possibly because of it—the number of parking tickets issued halfway through the fall of 1997 was almost quadruple the number issued the previous year. Sure, there may have been other factors, but The Plainsman’s staff cartoonist captured student attitude toward parking services that fall thus:
I thought it was funny. These days the kids just tweet AU Parking Service’s logo Photoshopped with a Bama A.
Related: Auburn student housing stereotypes from 1991.
Do you want TWER to keep on keepin’ on? Do you have $5 a month?
…
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I once bought a pedometer strictly to see how far I walked to class each day if I drove to my 10 AM Computer Systems class. It was a quarter of a mile one way from my car to Broun Hall. And that was before the dorms and the new arena were built (which eliminated about 500 parking spaces). I shudder to think about how it is now.
About this time (1998?), I was driving a car I bought from my cousin. The license plate was in his name, and I just hung an old C-zone tag in the window and parked wherever i wanted: the library parking deck, behind foy, next to Parker, etc. I got a shit ton of tickets, but they didn’t put them on my tuition bill b/c the car wasn’t in my name ( i assume the university somehow ties into the state license plate database).
Then one day, I got a 5 dollar ticket at a meter in downtown auburn, which I paid at the police station. My next tuition bill had 1100 dollars in parking fines. The university must have cross-referenced the plate on the city ticket with the AUPD tickets. that sucked, but since it was through the bursar office, I just added more $$ to my student loans for that quarter.
As Campus section editor for the Plainsman in the early 2000s, I remember having to make a conscious effort to quit putting “parking sucks” articles on the front page because we’d done them SO often.
Zach,
Nearly the same thing happened to me. I got a new car as a sophomore, but just kept my old C zone tag and parked every and anywhere. I got tickets out the wa-zoo, but they never appeared on my bursar bill. So I thought, “hell’s yeah, free parking”… It continued until I came to my car one day and it had a boot on it. To further complicate matters, they had attempted to boot my car a week before, but someone else in the same lot was also driving a silver toyota (big surprise) and they accidentally took my boot off; so not only did I (well…I say “I”…) have to pay the late tickets, the boot, they were also going to charge me with theft of university property because they thought I cut the other boot off. Only after a weeks long investigation did they discover their error; but we still had to pay… Thus the end of my driving on campus the beginning of tiger transit/riding a bike…
There is also something to be said for off campus parking. Those little red tow trucks are always going around looking to tow someone. Also the white city parking services trucks write tickets too. No parking spot is safe around here.
I was picking up my class schedule back in the 70s when the lady informed me that she couldn’t give it to me until I produced a receipt from the Campus police for a parking ticket. Turned out I had several and not enough money to pay them all. So I paid for one. It was $3. I got a receipt. Then I got my schedule. For the rest of my tenure at Auburn, I paid off one ticket per quarter and parked wherever I pleased. Computers aren’t all they are cracked up to be.
Damn kids… there no buses in the 80’s, AND we had the crack troopers of AUPD on the parking ticket beat. AND WE WERE GRATEFUL!
(Okay, we whined about parking like everybody else…)
I think I was single-handedly responsible for the jump in tickets issued in ’97. Started working for the Plainsman that year and parked in that B Zone lot for the rest of my AU career — despite the handfuls of tickets I received for doing so.
I drove to class once in 1995. Never again. I bought a bike to save time trying to find a space. A few weeks into my first quarter, I noticed there were (at the time) motorcycle parking places EVERYWHERE! I got me a very cheap motorcycle and rode, rain or shine. Do they still have alot of motorcycle parking?
I asked for convertible permit, ran it across a 25-watt bulb and pealed the C-Zone sticker off printed a A-B-C Zone sticker in Ariel 10pt and Parked where I damn well pleased. Parking Nazis would walk right by. It was an awesome 5 years of Undergrad