The Parking Rant Haiku:

My car could not park!
Oh dear law school, thanks a lot!
Tuition wasted, gas money too.

I have wanted to write this post all day and tried to think of various ways to make it creative-to somehow set this standard rant apart. I know I am not alone in experiencing problems with parking. Especially if you don’t arrive on campus at 7 AM. I don’t expect a space in the law school parking lot nestled between the law library and the actual school of law. However, I would appreciate being able to park in the structure that is adjacent to the school where I can walk to class with my laptop and books in about ten minutes or less. Normally this is not a problem, except when the school decides to loan out its facilities for conferences.

Today, the school took up approximately 600 spaces (and we are not a big campus, I would imagine there are less than a couple thousand spaces in any near proximity to the east side of campus where the law school is located) for a real estate conference. We received an email alerting us that parking would be “impacted.” It did not mention however, that impacted meant you would not get a parking space at all. I am willing to park in the sports center if I was lazy and tried to catch some extra sleep and thus lose out on the last few law school spaces or the structure spaces. However, today and on other occasions, those too are cordoned off leaving us to either park on the complete other side of campus, park in the community below the school and hike up, or else go home.

We are in finals; everyone is making decent efforts to be in class. A lot of people turned around and went home today. If not for the late date, I would have too-however, I had a meeting on campus after class anyway and so needed to be there regardless and thus sucked it up and parked off campus. I realize the school makes money, but am I really seeing the benefit from that? I think the law school pulls in its own money just in name alone. In fact, I think we should be spared such inconvenience and build a giant parking tower over and under the lot currently between the law school and law library. Decorate it with vines and stuff to make it look nice and then issue special permits just for law students. It could be done over the summer and be ready just in time for my 3L year.

My feelings on this issue are actually a lot stronger than this rather pacific rant might imply, I’m not sure it even counts as a rant, it just seemed like I should temper them on a public forum.

-jd

Forgive me if the above poem has too many or too few syllables, I’m trying to juggle my studying and blogging commitments accordingly.