If I were to write a hate letter to any establishment, it would be the U of M’s parking services. For a place that is named the “Welcome Centre,” it is one of the least welcoming places there are.
If you are ever unlucky enough to see a parking enforcement vehicle driving around campus, you’ve most likely seen them handing out tickets to cars. In my opinion, parking at the U of M should be free. Why on earth are students paying for parking at a university they already pay to attend?
Whenever I see one of those vehicles giving citations to students, I purposefully walk as slowly as humanly possible in front of said vehicle just to annoy them to the level that they annoy me.
I find it ironic, though, that a university that claims to value its students issued 13,000 parking citations in 2023, according to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, with a total revenue of $584,974.40 — all of which was paid to the U of M.
The greed coming from U of M parking services is nothing new. I’ve always had difficulties with them, whether because they’ve ticketed me for not parking within the allotted space or because the parking app crashed while I tried to pay. Boy oh boy, do they love to ticket people for any reason they can find.
Recently, I was towed off the U of M campus — something I had no idea they could even do. It is not listed anywhere on their website that they even engage in towing services.
I find it even more ridiculous that the university hired an outside company to tow away students when too many tickets accumulate, as if shutting down access to certain services on Aurora isn’t enough to encourage you to pay your tickets on time.
As I trudged down to Doctor Hook Towing that fateful Monday afternoon to retrieve my car from purgatory, a thought came to me. The U of M couldn’t care less if they cause mental distress to the students forced to scour the parking lot to find their disappearing car, like me. When I couldn’t find my car, I assumed it had been stolen. As I paid the $346 to have my car released, I asked the gentleman at the front counter if they had towed many people off campus that day. He responded with, “A lot.”
Eventually, once you’ve figured out your car’s been towed, you’ll trudge your way down to the “Welcome Centre” and argue with the employees at the front desk, who do not seem to care if you get your car back. The U of M needs to do better. They cannot be towing their own students away or bringing in an outside company to ensure citations are paid. Does the U of M have such a desperate need to expand the parking office into a mega mart that they cannot lay off such extreme ticketing?
