We have all done it. You are studying late Sunday night in the library with a midterm the next day only to realize that you still need to take your car back to A-Lot. The only problem is that A-Lot is located in a poorly lit residential area, a ten- to fifteen-minute walk from campus, depending on where you live.
If that is where A-Lot is located, I do not even want to know the locations of B- or C-Lots. Students who live off campus or at Greek houses with their own parking lots are the lucky ones. For those of us living on campus, parking at Dartmouth is an exhausting, expensive daily battle.
You could leave your car in a town-metered space overnight, but you better make sure it is not between Nov. 15 and April 30, when the winter parking ban is in effect. During the summer you could risk parking on a town street overnight, just be careful it is not on one of the six major streets covered by Hanover's summer parking ban, which is in effect for the rest of the year -- you guessed it -- from May 1 until Nov. 15.
Oh, also, make sure you are timely. Last spring I made the mistake of going to move my car from a metered space to A-Lot at 12:03 a.m., knowing that the winter parking ban went into effect for the night at 12:01 a.m. I reached my car only to find a $20 ticket wedged in the door with an issued time of 12:02 a.m. My car had been stalked. What's worse, it was a 60-degree night in April with zero chance of snow.
When I went to the town offices four days later to pay the ticket, I was told it had not yet been entered into the system. I paid the ticket anyway, with the assurance that it would be cleared once it did enter the system. Months later, I received a notice from the Town of Hanover of upwards of $50 in late fees for the ticket I had already paid. It comes as no surprise that Hanover's projected revenue from parking tickets for the 2008 fiscal year is $381,800.
With such totalitarian enforcement the norm, it is no wonder that the Town of Hanover maintains a Parking Division, replete with hats, jackets and even pick-up trucks with the division name emblazoned on the sides. With the slipping ratings of the Law and Order franchise, perhaps Dick Wolf should consider a fourth spinoff -- Law and Order: Hanover Parking Division. I, for one, would tune in for HPD every Friday night at 8.
Much to my dismay, however, I must concede that the Hanover Parking Division is actually the lesser of two evils. Enter Dartmouth Parking Operations.
My relationship with Dartmouth Parking Operations and its menacing, dark-green tow truck can be best illustrated by the 1971 Steven Spielberg film "Duel," in which a traveling businessman is stalked around the California desert by an ominous, exhaust-spewing tanker truck and its phantom driver who is trying to kill him for no apparent reason. My ongoing battle culminated when my car was booted while I was helping a friend unload supplies for a charity dinner outside of Collis.
If you are living off campus or parking in a privately owned fraternity or sorority lot, the College still technically requires you to register your vehicle with the parking office. The risk of not registering your car is that if it is found in any Dartmouth lot, even if you are taking five minutes to unload your car after a weekend trip, the College will give you a ticket for $50. If your car is registered, the fine is reduced to a mere $25. You can park at a Red Sox-Yankees game for less than that.
Put simply, the Town of Hanover and the College place far too much emphasis on something as trivial as parking enforcement. I wish they would seek a solution to the fundamental scarcity of parking with the same fervor.
With the parking situation in Hanover as egregious as it is, you would swear we go to school in New York City, not in a remote area of New Hampshire where biweekly trips to the local Wal-Mart pass for the best form of off-campus entertainment.
If I receive any response from the powers that be, I am sure it will mention very limited parking as a justification for draconian parking enforcement. This would-be response ignores the true nature of the problem. With all the wisdom that Dartmouth seeks to impart on its students, the fact that no one has come up with a feasible solution to the campus's parking woes is incredible.
If I become one of the few alumni successful enough to have a building named after me, I would be honored to have it be a reasonably located parking facility. It would not be cheap, but if Dartmouth can spend over $100,000 on sheets of laminated human hair and Elmer's Glue now hanging in the library, I think we can manage.
