There are several drawbacks that come with residing three blocks from a small liberal arts college/law school/state park. I currently live three houses down from a psuedo-frat house that hosts bonfire parties every few weekends, objects ranging from plastic beer cups to street signs to live coyotes to abandoned cars routinely wind up in my bushes and, with all the undergrads zooming around on bikes, driving through the neighborhood can be more difficult than an Olympic biathlon. On top of all that, now I have to contend with campus meter maids overstepping their bounds.

Here's at least a few reasons why this ticket should have never wound up on my windshield yesterday afternoon:

1. I am not currently, nor have I ever been, a student at Lewis and Clark College. No markings on my vehicle suggest that I'm a student. In fact, there's even a University of Oregon Duck sticker on the back window. Does L and C even have a mascot?

2. My vehicle was parked directly in front of my residence where I've been living for over four years.

3. If I'm not mistaken, the school has no authority, legal or otherwise, to issue parking tickets at an off campus location on a public street located several blocks off....wait, wait. Hold up.

Actually, according to this, Lewis and Clark does have some level of "author-a-tah" to patrol the surrounding neighborhood, slapping tickets on "student" cars with what at least appears to be reckless abandon. Worse yet, they can boot vehicles and even have them towed. Yikes. What good can come of this?

I've put in a call and I've submitted an appeal to the campus' Transportation and Parking Office. Unfortunately, according to what's printed on the back of the ticket, I could wait four to six weeks for a response. In the meantime, who knows how many more times my poor, widdle car is going to be ticketed?

The last thing I want to deal with is a fleet of campus meter maids backed by the state's most well respected law school. Maybe I should just park on my lawn for the remainder of the academic calendar year.

Labels: justice