Sometime during the summer term I went to my fraternity's parking lot to find that our cars had been ticketed by a Dartmouth Parking Operations officer.
"Hmm...," I said. "What rule have I transgressed now?" I read the printout stating the reason for the citation: "Unregistered vehicle." "Oh, I see," I thought, "The College wants to know what cars my fraternity has in its lot."
But there's a problem in that desire: we own our building, we own our land and we own our parking lot. Each year, we pay thousands of dollars in property taxes and insurance on our real estate. Needless to say, we own our own cars. So in effect, the College is ticketing students for parking their own cars on their own land and not telling them about it.
We have to ask ourselves what's going on here. The only parallels that come to mind are nosy government agencies trying to keep tabs on citizens so they can't cause trouble for the state.
Actually, what's going on is quite clear: the College expects fraternities -- if they want to be recognized and be able to use the College's billing system -- to comply with certain regulations. Most of these regulations are perfectly reasonable, such as that they comply with the fire code and keep the house in a good, safe working order. Some, however, are unreasonable.
Many are simply an invasion of the fraternity's privacy, if not an infringement of civil liberties. The College puts a limit on the amount of boarders that a house can take in. It says that recent alumni still working on campus may not live in the house. While students in dorms may use whatever extension cords they'd like, fraternities get hefty fines unless they use the more expensive kinds. Also, fraternities cannot harbor alcohol in certain types of containers, like kegs and beer-balls despite their lawful purchase by 21-plus year-olds. And then there's parking: privately-owned Greek houses must tell the College what vehicles it wants to put in its land, or face fines.
The theme of most regulations is that we are not completely adults yet, and we cannot always be counted on to take the extra time to make our houses safe by ourselves, so they formalize the process. However, the College has the power to say that matriculated students may not live in certain buildings (any buildings the college chooses), and they use this precarious power to abusive extremes, as in the case with the cars.
Why are cars on private land supposed to be registered? The College says because it will enable it to contact owners before it tows cars if they are ever parked in College tow-away zones. But realistically that happens only a very scarce handful of times each year.
The College says that this enables it to ticket unwelcome cars in our lot, while leaving ours alone. In reality when we have had unwelcome cars in our lot, the College has never ticketed them. If they'd like in the future, we'll call them and point out the offender. If they won't come because we won't meet their regulations, that's fine: we are a private organization, and the Hanover Police are obligated to stand by while we exercise the right to have illegally-parked vehicles towed from our lot; that's what we pay taxes for.
In truth the College wants our cars registered so we have no option but to pay for parking tickets we may accumulate on campus, or not graduate. It's a convenient method of enforcement.
What's ironic is that if you live in an apartment on Wheelock Street, you don't have to register your car, and the College won't harass you. I'm sure it's not because it doesn't want to, but only because it hasn't found a way to mandate that people living in their own apartment buildings off-campus let the College know what's going on in their lives and in their parking lots.
What can you do? Inquire as to what rules precisely your organization has agreed to follow and find out what services the town of Hanover must provide for you as a taxpayer.
If you're brave, tell the parking man to leave your lot or you'll have him arrested for trespassing; that he can explain your agreement with the College to the judge. Our license plates belong to the state, not to the College, and they say it all: "Live Free or Die."
