FINE FOR PARKING

The announcement that 46 automobiles have been tagged within the last two days for infringement of the parking laws is rather a startling one. For, altho parking in the wrong place is hardly a sin, it will hereafter cost the owner of the car the sum of ten dollars. Except for the leniency of Captain Brennan there would be 460 less dollars in the pockets of various student owners already.

Probably a larger number of men at the University own or operate cars than at either Yale or Princeton. For at Yale only seniors are allowed to own them, and the advice of President Hibben of Princeton, expressed last year in no uncertain terms, was that Princeton undergraduates should not own motor cars. Therefore men of the University enjoy rather an exceptional privilege in their unrestricted ownership and use of cars.

The keynote of the University's policy has always been to allow men complete freedom in so far as they can use it to advantage. There are exceptionally few prohibitions--for everyone who "reads carefully a copy of rules relating to college studies" etc., and who observes them. For others there are the usual rules and restrictions. And so it is entirely in keeping with the policy and spirit of the University that every student, who can and who wishes to, should own an automobile.

But, altho the Office chooses to say nothing on the subject, the city of Cambridge--under whose jurisdiction all students come, for the time, at least--has sundry and various laws upon such subjects as parking and speeding. And so, for all automobile owners, it is just as important to learn the city laws relating to parking--and, of course, to all more serious offences--as it is for all students to learn the college rules. If for no other reason, these outside rules should be obeyed so that all existing privileges may be kept, and so that there may be no need for action from within.