The Penn State Parking Office has really gone too far this time.

I understand that the employees of the parking office are blessed with the thankless job of trying to manage the parking situation on a campus filled with thousands of people and thousands of cars. However, they certainly don't make their job any easier by doing some of the things I've observed in recent weeks. And more importantly, I really think they need to sit down and rethink their mission and their tactics.

The Nittany Parking Deck on campus is a public, pay-by-the-hour parking lot that doubles as a faculty and staff parking deck. That means that owners of certain faculty and staff permits may park there on a regular basis and the general public may also park there if they take a ticket and pay on the way out. Unless they happen to be a Penn State student. See, student parking is prohibited in the deck during the day. Many students get around this problem by taking their student parking permit out of the window and entering through the normal public pay-by-the-hour entrance. This is a reasonable option for students who have classes in the Keller Building for example. It simply makes no sense for them to park in the Bryce Jordan Center commuter lot and ride on a bus across campus for one class.

Here's where the problem begins. This past week, I observed Penn State parking enforcement officials placing tickets on student vehicles in the lot.

Apparently, the officials were running the license plates on vehicles in the lot to determine if they were registered to Penn State students. If the vehicle was indeed registered to a Penn State student, they were issued a ticket — even though they had paid to park in the lot.

At first, this may seem like a reasonable way to enforce a simple rule — there is supposed to be no student parking in that lot. However, upon closer inspection, you can begin to realize that the process is discriminatory and legally unsound.

When a police department sets up a D.U.I. checkpoint, they have to follow certain parameters in order to preserve Constitutional rights and maintain a sound legal basis for what they are doing. The most important step is having a set process for stopping vehicles. The police will not simply stop certain vehicles that come through the checkpoint because they look "suspicious." That would open the door to all kinds of discrimination and profiling issues. So, they will often decide to stop every 4th vehicle, or every other vehicle, or every vehicle in the fast lane, etc.

I watched the parking attendant run license plates that day and was amazed at the "discretion" they were using. A small red compact car with a fraternity sticker on the window, was scrutinized, the license ran, and a ticket issued. But what do you think happened when they came to the black Acura with the alumni association plates?

The answer is obvious.

Just like the Toyota, it had no permit — meaning that the person was a member of the general public and a paying customer. The only difference is that it didn't look like a student's car.

Here's the real irony. I was walking in this lot because a friend of mine who graduated last semester had attended the same lecture class with me in Keller as a guest. She parked her car successfully in this deck and received no hassle. She is not a registered student anymore. At the space next to us, someone else who had come from the same lecture arrived to find a ticket on their window. Both she and my friend paid to park in the lot. The only difference – this other woman pays thousands of dollars a semester to attend Penn State classes, and my friend does not.

In another example, I parked my car in an "illegal" place to drop a paper off to a professor. When returning to my vehicle I was dismayed to see one of Penn State's parking attendants writing me a ticket. Quite simply, I had broken a rule, and so I really wasn't too upset about it. However, this attendant approached me as I got into my car and demanded to see my ID. I asked him why, and he began to lecture me about not parking in a faculty lot in order to attend class. Again he demanded the ID.

The funny thing is that I guess I understand the basic tenants of the law better than he does, because what he must not of known, is that he simply can't do that. The ticket had already been issued. Who I was made no difference to the situation whatsoever. More importantly, this person was not a sworn police officer, and beyond that, I had committed no crime in his presence nor was I under arrest for any crime. Therefore, he had no legal basis to detain me in any way.

He simply was getting a little carried away in his job responsibilities and "authority" and seemed to misunderstand his actual role altogether. The parking office has to be aware that they have earned such a hated reputation. That may come with the territory. It is necessary to be firm with regulations on a campus this large. But, maybe it is worth reevaluating some of the attitudes that come from that first floor office in Eisenhower Deck. Is it really necessary for people (including faculty and staff) to dread any interaction with your office?

I am not suggesting that students should be allowed to park cars all over campus. I'd rather that students (and everyone for that matter) didn't drive on campus at all and were able to rely solely on an efficient mass-transit system (which they can't).

However, there are certain situations, such as the Nittany Parking Deck, where the parking office better find a way to legally and fairly enforce the "no student" rule, or just leave it alone altogether. Because people are going to start questioning these practices. The funny thing is, that lot has never been full, not one time, in the past few weeks. So is it worth it?

If the university administration wants to take steps to reverse this trend, one place to start would be to get out into the streets, or the parking lots I suppose, and find out what is going on for themselves.