Letter to Editor by Kathleen Russell

On April 5 after 7 p.m., a number of UK women’s rugby players were ticketed for being parked adjacent to the rugby pitch located off Alumni Drive.

When these ladies noticed their cars being ticketed they ran to save their trusty steeds from further financial harm.

As they dropped their rugby balls for their car keys, the parking officer hurriedly keyed in a few more numbers just to get more tickets printed.

My point in this argument is not to knock an employee for doing his or her job. My point is —what’s the point?

What is the point of building more structures or delineating fields to specific interests if we all purchase parking permits at exorbitantly high prices and are then ticketed for parking well after business hours, adjacent to our pitch, in a poorly signed area, behind storage warehouses, and over 1/2 mile from campus proper.

These tickets were marked “for parking on grass.” Several cars were not on any grass but clearly on asphalt, and the others were hardly on what any botanist would classify as grass.

Again, my beef is not solely with UK Parking and Transportation Services. Although the quickened pace of ticket writing after seeing the team alerted to their imminent woes was anything but encouraging. It is more to express frustration from a group over on-going petty use of authority.

We just renewed those permits 5 days ago, often walk nearly a mile to get to our classrooms, living quarters, and offices and now face continuing ticketing when we work hard to represent the university in club athletics.

Maybe we can sell hotdogs at our games to make money for the parking tickets? Oh wait, no one will come to watch if they have to park two miles away.

Kathleen Russell

plant and soil sciences graduate student