University of Virginia Library

Parking

From the time students return from
Christmas vacation until early March
Charlottesville is not a very pleasant place to
live. In fact, anywhere that is cold is not too
pleasant when a person is forced to adapt
himself to an academic regimen. Students
returning to the University after the holiday
season found over a foot of snow, ice, and
slush not only on the ground, but also
clogging the streets and sidewalks.

As unwary first-year students or other
newcomers to Charlottesville may discover, to
venture off a sidewalk here in the winter is to
invite death by mud. Of course, there is the
small problem of distinguishing the snow
covered sidewalks from the rest of the
landscape. However, we do not complain that
all of the walkways were not immaculate for
students and faculty walking, or may we say
sloshing, to classes yesterday morning. The
main sidewalks were at least passable and
Grounds workers could be seen busily clearing
ice and snow from other less traveled ones.

The men from Buildings and Grounds were
not the only University employees who
returned to regular work schedules with a
vengeance. The University Police, more
commonly known as Unicops, zealously were
ticketing every student car in sight, at least
those cars that in any way protruded into
sacrosanct parking areas. We beg mercy
Imagine the poor University student returning
to Charlottesville on Sunday night only to
find almost every parking lot uncleared after
flirting with death on icy highways just so he
could attend classes the next day. There was
no place to put his car after a long, hard trip.

Last year the Department of Security
reported that fines collected from parking
tickets was in five figures: surely after
yesterday's purge, the sum has climbed to six
figures. We thought that this money was being
used, in part, to improve the parking facilities
around the Grounds. Evidently the
Department has not earmarked much of it for
clearing snow from student parking areas. If
the job is not their responsibility, we suggest
that they take into account the severe parking
shortage in times of severely inclement
weather before they slap a five dollar parking
ticket on some penniless U—Student's
windshield. The Traffic Control Committee
should also show wide clemency for the
students who have received the controversial
tickets.