Last week I wrote a post about receiving a parking ticket from an overzealous Lewis and Clark campus cop. I made a phone call and submitted an appeal to contest it. While the fine print on the school's Department of Parking and Transportation website clearly states that I would have to wait four to six weeks for a response, I decided to trek over to their office on Monday.

My home is about a five minute walk from Lewis and Clark so I set out on foot, naively expecting that the office would be conveniently located right next to the law school. Er, nope. It actually sits on the other side of SW Terwilliger on the opposite side of the main campus.

I hadn't set foot on the main campus in nearly a decade and, if you've ever been, you know that Lewis and Clark proper is a maze-like cacophony of winding cobblestone paths, Victorian-inspired buildings, gardens, hills and old growth trees that block any architectural point-of-reference. While the views of Mt Hood are worthy of a postcard, it's easy to get lost and parts of the campus, especially those statues in front of the art gallery, look like they're straight out of Pan's Labrynth.

I half-expected a mysterious goat creature to burst out of Tyron Creek and start babbling at me in Spanish about a magical underground realm buried beneath the West Hills. Plus, I'll be honest: I wandered in circles feeling like an interloper among hoards of undergrads trucking from campus to the residence halls. They could see right through my parka and messenger bag and tell that I was not one of them. The fact that I'm ten years older than them didn't help.

Anyway, the Department of Parking and Transportation sits in a corner near a parking lot tucked behind a row of dorms. Inside, a clerk was yelling at her computer, further contributing to my Lewis Carroll-marinated impression of the campus. She calmed down when she spotted me on the other side of the counter. After apologizing for the outburst and the ticket, she vowed to add my car into a database of ticket-proof neighborhood vehicles.

Total time investment to get there and back? Nearly ninety minutes but it was totally worth it, especially if it prevents any future tickets.

Labels: justice

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