I t's Sunday night. The absence of car and foot traffic on Grounds is almost surreal.
Then, all of a sudden, 10 robust tow trucks with flashing lights dappling the night sky come tearing down McCormick Road. Then you realize that it's your car helplessly trailing behind one of them.
"I was never so furious as the day I got towed," second-year College student Laura Austin said.
Students, Charlottesville residents and parking officials agree that there is a parking problem at the University. On the evening of Oct. 15, a University police officer, who requested to remain anonymous, reported 17 cars to be towed off of one strip on McCormick Road.
In all, there are about 300 parking violations reported per day around the University, according to the University's Department of Parking and Transportation.
"The problem is the high interest in the close-in parking," Parking and Transportation Director Rebecca White said. "Everyone wants to park close to the University buildings, but the supply just doesn't match the demand."
The complaints
"They are parking Nazis," fourth-year College student Justin Sharry said.
"I swear they spend their entire day searching for my car to give me a ticket," third-year College student Grant Mayer protested.
If you have a car on Grounds, more than likely you have your own sad parking tune to sing. Second-year College student Elizabeth Beecherl believes she tops the chart with her parking delinquencies.
"Since September I have been towed twice and received 12 parking tickets, eight of
which I still have to pay," Beecherl said. "I feel like I am funding the city. I think they are taking advantage of me to pay for fancy flat-screen computers. They should start donating my money to the homeless or something."
Austin said she encounters most of her parking problems around her house, which is located on Virginia Avenue.
"I feel like it is a conspiracy and they are out to get the students," Austin said. "I have been towed twice and it was so dumb and unfair. Both times I got towed because there was a bush blocking the 'No Parking' sign. I had to pay $55 fees each."
Similarly, Sharry admits to paying $20 a week in parking garages so he won't accrue any tickets.
"It's frustrating as hell to pay more money on parking at the University than I do on my books," he said. "That is why we all take risks and park illegally. Sometimes you just have to take the chance and blend your car with the others into an illegal spot so that you don't have to pay the $8 to spend the night at the library."
Even though students joke that the money collected from ticketing funds luxury items like computers and doughnuts, White reported that the money the University makes from parking violations goes elsewhere, namely to salaries, supplies and equipment, utilities and for debt services like the debt owed on the University Bookstore parking garage.
One third-year College student, who requested that his name be withheld, has an intricate tale of parking woes which began the first semester of his first year, a time when students are not permitted to have cars on Grounds.
Out of attachment to his wheels, he decided to make a fraudulent parking permit to hang from his rearview mirror that allowed him to have a car at the dorms for nearly a month. When his plan was discovered, he paid off a friend living in Hereford to get him a parking permit.
Though he had his illegal Hereford parking permit, he still managed to get towed four times that same year. Eventually, he lost his parking privileges at the University. But this year, he has regained such privileges merely because he now owns a new car with a different license plate.
Cracked rear view
Despite students' opinion that the police officials dedicate their lives to issuing as many parking tickets as possible, the officers, on the other hand, feel it is barely an issue.
"It is our job to enforce the laws, especially if someone is parked in a handicapped or fire-lane space," Charlottesville Police Officer M.S. Fields said. "But we use discretion. We don't just drive up and down Chancellor Street looking for cars to tow."
Even University officials are not exempt from parking enforcement.
"I've gotten my own parking tickets," White admitted.
The Charlottesville police said that they have received their own handful of parking tickets around the area.
Fields and White said that neither the city nor the University have parking ticket quotas to fill, and it does not matter financially if they issue one ticket a day or 200.
"People don't realize that parking is an issue in any city or university town," Charlottesville Police Officer Cory Calberath said. "The problem is not restricted to Charlottesville, and the fines that we charge are barely comparable to those in other cities."
A solution
Those students who have encountered parking difficulties think that there is an obvious answer to the parking shortage that the University simply overlooks.
White rejected the rumor of an underground parking garage, one of the more creative ideas proposed.
"That would cost about $30,000 a space," she said. "Just imagine how much that would cost if we wanted 500 spaces. The one [parking garage] under the bookstore cost $15,000 a space, and we are still paying for that."
White added that if Parking and Transportation does anything, it would build another lot behind the Italian Villa on Emmet Street.
Fields agreed that the solution to the problem is difficult.
"There really isn't much that you could do except for tear down the city and redo the whole layout," he said.
Second-year College student Theckla Sterett disagreed.
"It seems like there is something that they could do," she said. "I'm usually pro-environment, but I don't want to get towed anymore."
Third-year College student Danny De Deo, who recently got his car towed one late evening, felt he had the perfect solution.
"It is my goal to graduate from U.Va. and become the chairman of the University Transit Service," De Deo said. "I would dedicate my life to making roads and spaces. Above all, I would allow for free parking on the Lawn."
While White realistically sees no easy solution, she expressed her understanding for students' frustrations.
"The problem just goes with the territory, and we have to try not to let it get us down," she said. "In good faith, we have to do the best we can to alleviate the clash between what is convenient and the best ways to keep the University beautiful"
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