Cops and Cars

Twenty-two Dunster Street certainly qualifies as one of the unhappiest places around the Square these days. On the second floor of the building sit the University police, and trudging up the stairs every minute or so comes a persecuted-looking undergraduate clutching a little orange card. The students' attitudes vary from despair to defiance; the attitude of Captain Toohy and his staff is always one of helpless sympathy. It just seems that there are more cars at the College this year than there are legal places to park them.

Undaunted by this problem, various local authorities have squirmed out from under the fenders recently to offer various solutions. High on their list, of course, is the standard reaction of throwing both hands up into the air and declaring--with a disgusted sigh--that one of these days the University will have to restrict undergraduate cars. This point of view, though it has a certain mathematical logic, is simply unacceptable to most members of the University. A hands-off policy toward student cars has long symbolized Harvard's desire to treat its students as adults, and no one wants to see this policy abandoned merely because of a little parking trouble.

Yet something must be done--and quickly--if automobiles are not to crowd academicians right out of Harvard Square. The Administration has already taken a step in the right direction by planning to enlarge the Business School parking lot and to utilize, if necessary, the large Stadium parking area on Soldiers Field. Both these lots are a considerable distance from the Square, but it is usually worth a little walk to avoid a night-long game of cops and parkers.

The parking areas have not been enlarged yet, however, and meanwhile there are hundreds of student car-owners who cannot get space in a University lot. These undergraduates are currently combing the local streets each night in a desperate attempt to hide their automobiles. More often than not they fail, and in the morning find tickets on their windshields from University or Cambridge police, and even on some occasions, from both.

These taggings by the city are inevitable under the present law, but it does seem unfair that students who collect four or five University tickets in this manner are liable to disciplinary action by the Dean's Office. Harvard need not be responsible for providing parking space for its students but it should not take it upon itself to enforce Cambridge ordinances on non-University property. Above all, the Administration should give up punishing parking offenses against the city with such academic niceties as "parking probation."

But the best step of all would be for the University and Cambridge to stop quibbling about whose police are going to ticket which car and to recognize that, like it or not, they are in this parking mess together. If city and Yard officials got together, they might, for instance, work out a way to revise the Cambridge ordinances in order to permit overnight parking on alternate sides of local streets. Cars parked on the right side one night and on the left the next would obstruct neither fire engines nor street cleaners. And they might even become useful things to have around again.