Alumnus speaks out on campus parking ticket

To the Editor,

In December 2008, I returned to IU-Bloomington to visit friends and conduct research for a project I was working on.

I came to campus late on a Thursday night — it was after 9 p.m. — and one of the C parking lots between Second and Third streets was practically empty.

I visited a former professor, and when I came back to my car at about 10 p.m., I had a parking ticket. At 10 p.m., with practically an empty lot, I got a parking ticket.

I was fuming. I’m an IU alumnus who has received two degrees from Bloomington. I’ve given a total of seven and a half years of my life to my alma mater (not to mention a fair amount of monetary donations to the IU Foundation), and this is how the University welcomes me back?

With a $50 parking ticket at 10 p.m. in an empty parking lot? So I decided I wasn’t going to pay the ticket. It was just the principle of the thing.

Now, three years later, I’m being harassed by a collection agency to pay the $50 ticket the IU parking Gestapo jammed me with.

So I guess I have to pay for the ticket. Rules, I guess, are rules. But if this is how the University treats its alumni, I’m definitely going to think twice before returning to Bloomington to visit my beloved alma mater.

So thanks IU. You’ve driven away a dedicated alumnus.

­— Ryan Whirty