An almost foolproof scheme to avoid Cornell’s dreaded parking tickets
We accept no responsibility for this not working
It was early in the first semester when my roommate stormed into our room with a slip of paper in his hand.
“They gave me a ticket!” he said angrily. He had brought his car up over Fall Break and paid to park it in the RPCC parking lot, but he had not yet received a physical parking slip in the mail to display on his dashboard. “I’m protesting it.”
This was my first encounter with Cornell’s terrible parking system. I normally walk to class so I’m not paying attention to cars and parking very often, but now I realize how bad our parking situation truly is.
Most parking lots are either too small to fit an appropriate amount of cars or so far out of the way that there’s almost no point in driving to class. The only lots that could actually be useful, such as the one outside of Malott, are permit-only parking.
I was walking with a friend who was parked illegally in that Malott lot. Thankfully, he did not have a ticket, but when he jokingly said: “There’s gotta be a way to fake a parking pass,” it got me thinking.
Now, before I delve deeper into this topic, let me remind you that this is EXTREMELY ILLEGAL AND YOU SHOULD NEVER DO THIS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
Anyways, I started thinking about the idea of fake parking passes. The Tompkins County parking pass used in the Malott lot is just a small purple piece of paper with a few words and numbers on it.
Moreover, because people leave the passes in plain sight, it wouldn’t be hard to walk up to a random car and take a photo of their pass.
After that, all one needs to do is find an appropriate purple shade of construction paper, duplicate everything on the parking pass while making slight changes to some aspects, such as the identification number, and print it out onto the construction paper.
One can then cut the construction paper to a similar size as the real pass and if it looks presentable, it can be used to park in all permit-only parking spots at Cornell.
Yes, it can be argued that this is morally wrong, but Cornell makes us pay for everything imaginable already.