It absolutely breaks my heart when I am driving around the lot near my dorm and I cannot find a single residential parking spot. In fact, it ruins my day sometimes. On occasion, I just need to park for 30 minutes before leaving for work, but other times, I get back to SMU at an hour that no girl should have to walk alone in the dark. Yet, still, SMU's Park-N-Pony shows no mercy.
Let us flashback to April 2016 on a night when golf-ball-sized hail was in the forecast. I searched through every parking garage -- Mustang, Moody, Airline and Binkley -- absolutely no spots were open except on the rooftop where the hail would hit. I decided to park in a visitor’s section to protect my car alongside many of my other fellow students. I came back to move my car just before 8am the next day and my car, along with many others, was booted. Essentially I was punished for trying to protect my car from hail damage.
There was another time that I received a ticket for "improper decal placement." I was not the only one with such a ridiculous experience - I’ve had friends get a ticket for their decal being just slightly tilted. I don’t see the issue personally, but we all know SMU loves to make money in any way they can.
Lat but not least, my father received a ticket for parking at a meter with a handicapped sticker on his car (my mother is handicapped) after finding no available, accssesible spaces. By law, cars for or driven by disabled people are allowed to park in a metered parking spot without having to pay. Yet Park-N-Pony disregarded this law and ticketed him anyway.
There are countless other students with plenty of Park-N-Pony horror stories. Why are they so ruthless? Parking on campus is already tough enough with the severe lack of available spaces. So, why can they not be more forgiving?
The SMU library is fairly generous. If you have late balances or fees and you talk to the librarian, he or she will likely help you. They are not in the mood to scam a poor, broke college student, they are there to help. Park-N-Pony should have this type of attitude. Instead of being against the students, they should be for the students. I have tried appealing tickets before, but generally my appeals are denied. It’s unfortunate since most of the time, I was not causing a problem with where I was parked. I just happened to be parked in the “wrong spot” to avoid being late to class or work.
Honestly, Park-N-Pony is one of SMU’s lowest points. Yet, it doesn’t have to be such a nuisance. There are better ways to enforce parking than ticketing every car whose meter runs out a minute before the driver arrives. If SMU believes parking is such an issue, though, why don't they limit the number of residential cars or - as crazy as it sounds - build more parking lots? There are better ways to go about parking than the ways of Park-N-Pony.
