Last winter, after the first few months of my freshman year, there was nothing I wanted more than to have my own car on campus. Where would a car be more valuable, I thought to myself, than in a school once described by its own president as the only one where students “[walk up] a 50-degree incline in 10-degree weather to get a 30 percent on a prelim?” That’s why I was so excited to bring my car up this year — no more walking to the gym in subzero temperatures; no more wading through 10-foot snow drifts on my way to class; no more cascading down Libe Slope on sheets of black ice. Unfortunately, I made one crucial oversight: trying to find a parking space in Cornell is as likely as Don Imus being invited to be the keynote speaker at an NAACP conference.

Simply put, the parking authority at Cornell resembles the kind one would expect to find if Germany had not lost World War II: something cold, ruthless and strangely omniscient. Indeed, there is no inch of this campus, no dark corner of the Ag Quad, that is not being constantly patrolled by at least one member of Cornell’s parking and transportation services. And just when you think you’ve finally evaded Cornell’s authoritarian parking regime, some phantom parking ticket pops up out of nowhere to ruin your day.

Come to think of it, the only place I’ve ever managed to park my car on campus without being fined or harassed by strange people in brown uniforms is the valet lot at the Statler Hotel when my parents come to visit, and I don’t even get to park it there myself.

It seems like almost everyone who’s brought his car up to Cornell has regretted it at some point or another. Even if you are willing to pay the overpriced fee for what will likely be an inconvenient parking spot, there is virtually nowhere else on campus to park in the event that you actually want to drive your car. And so it seems to me that one of two things must happen — either students should not be allowed to keep cars at Cornell, or the University must find some way to accommodate the enormous demand for parking, which has pushed students to endure countless tickets and fines for the privilege of parking by their own dorms and classrooms.

My first encounter with parking regulators at Cornell was actually last year, when I managed to take my car up for the final few weeks of spring semester, just to test the waters. My plan was admittedly a crude one — to park my car behind my North Campus dorm and hope for the best. I guess I figured that one or two tickets would be a small price to pay for the luxury of driving to Wendy’s at 3 a.m. to order a spicy chicken sandwich.

It turns out I was very wrong. First of all, Ithaca’s Wendy’s closes at 1 a.m., not 3 a.m. More importantly, I’d underestimated the sheer vastness and tenacity of Cornell’s Commuter and Parking Services, which proceeded to issue me tickets on what seemed like a daily basis. Even more unsettling was that the tickets, which increased in roughly 10-dollar increments, culminated in the near-towing of my car outside White Hall on the Arts Quad, a disaster I avoided only by sprinting out of my 10:10 class and begging the tow-truck guy to give me one more chance.

The bottom line is that even if you find a convenient place to park on campus, it’s probably not a legal one. And don’t think people haven’t come up with clever ways to evade parking tickets. For example, a few of my friends and I attempted to record the exact times of the day ticket-issuers were passing through our dorm’s lot. To our surprise, however, the parking patrollers seemed to outwit us by altering their schedules and coming an hour earlier or later.

In an act of desperation, one of my more daring friends produced what looked like a near-perfect replica of the parking passes issued by the University. But the parking monitors were as clever as they were persistent; or at least they had good eyes, because one of them managed to discover some minute irregularity on my friend’s fake parking pass and the car was towed within minutes.

Probably the only convenient aspect of parking at Cornell is that tickets are automatically bursared. But as I began to realize in an e-mail from my father earlier this month, even that can cause some distress.

Ben,

I received yet another $60.00 bill for illegal parking, this time at Day Hall. It is bad enough that you get all these tickets. It is worse that you do nothing about it, letting a $15.00 late fee accumulate. Worse yet is that you think I should just suck it up.

If this continues, I promise that I will sell that car back to the dealer and pocket the proceeds.

Love, Dad

So, not only has parking at Cornell made daily life a little more frustrating, but it’s also put a damper on my family relations. And while I ultimately have no excuse for causing my parents to suffer the economic burden of my parking tickets, I can’t help but insist that Cornell has gone a little overboard with its parking restrictions. Would it really hurt to employ fewer people to give me parking tickets and a few more to help the City of Ithaca speed up the renovation of the Thurston Avenue Bridge, which appears to be entirely free of construction for about 23 hours each day?

People who argue that students should simply choose to leave their cars at home are ignoring the problem. If Cornell is so insistent on limiting parking locations on campus, the answer is not to make students who do have cars miserable as possible; it’s to simply not allow them to have cars. But as long as students are allowed to bring cars to campus, the University should do a better job with accommodating them.

Ben Notterman is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at ben8@cornell.edu. The Scorpion King appears alternate Fridays.