Issue date: 7/23/08 Section: Opinion

Lately there has been a lot of construction and renovation going on in Cougar Village, but recently there was an addition that might be a bit unnecessary.

As I was parking near my 510 apartment, I noticed that in front of one of the parking spots closest to the sidewalk had a hole in the cement that had been filled in front of it.

I wasn't sure what it was for, so I didn't think any more of it.

About a week later, I came upon the cement hole again.

Only it wasn't a hole anymore. It had been filled by a parking meter, blinking red, informing me that if I wanted to park, I needed to insert coins.

Did I need coins to park in my own residential parking lot? No, because every other spot near it was meter-less.

At first I thought parking services was pulling an elaborate prank on someone, going to great lengths for this joke and I hoped the punch line was great.

Then again, I thought this might be the start of a great conspiracy of trying to get students to park further and further away from their destination. The whole world must be against students parking in convenient locations, I thought.

But no, the meter stood alone for over a week, and continues to stand, like a beacon of overpriced parking in the free lot of my life.

Is the school that hard up for money that parking services needs to install a random smattering of meters in semi-convenient locations? If the university would put meters in the whole line of parking spots next to the sidewalk, that would make sense, but a single meter located directly adjacent to free parking?

I don't mind walking a few more feet, but please, someone make sense of our parking situation, because either I don't get the joke or someone with a bad sense of humor has started installing random parking meters.

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