Open Season

Undergraduate car owners, assuming their onerous place among other unprotected game, will find the coming season a difficult one to survive. An inflexible University administration can offer no help for the parking problems of students and forces them onto the needle sharp pencils of Cambridge traffic officers. With limited garage space hopelessly beyond the checkbooks of most men, drivers face exile or the prospect of frequent appearances at the Magistrate's Court for parking violations. As long as the University allows unlimited automobile privileges, it is, in part, responsible for alleviating the parking problem.

Last fall, college officials recognized the need for student garage space, but discarded their idea of cross-Charles lots as a poor financial gamble when the plan received little response from car owners. Of the 110 men reporting no storage space, only fifty-five percent showed any interest in a parking area twenty minutes away from the Houses. With a tacit understanding between police and students owning out-of-state vehicles, most men found it convenient to leave cars on the street overnight, secure in the knowledge that their tickets would not be prosecuted. This autumn, in an effort to recoup the imposing loss of 1500 unpaid fines, parking meters have been installed on every conceivable curb and Cambridge police have asked the University for a list of transient registrations. A great majority of the 900 college-operated automobiles are now left without the comforting privilege of previous years and must face the fantastically high rates of garage owners. If the Cambridge City Council is unwilling to curb the garage lobby to the extent of permitting overnight parking near the college, then the University should attempt to provide other facilities.

Conveniently labelled as financially unsound, the original plan for University-operated parking lots on Soldiers Field and behind the Business School bears careful reconsideration. Such problems as grading the land, surfacing it with cinders, constructing a six foot fence and a sentry-box for the watchman seem easily surmountable in view of the great influx of cars. More important, however, is a University objection that the project would be a ridiculous investment if, as last year, students refused to use the area. Since the Student Council is investigating the situation, it might be wise to conduct another poll and determine how many students would find such an area practical. It can hardly be expected that Harvard University will go as far as Yale in tearing down buildings to provide space for cars, but the very magnitude of the parking problem demands official aid.