Public Safety Officer Tickets
Published: Friday, March 1, 2013
Updated: Friday, March 1, 2013 14:03
It was quite a scene this past weekend when hundreds of unsuspecting Holy Cross students received multiple parking tickets for various offences. Whether the tickets were given for a valid reason, or for parking next to a reserved spot in a completely legal one, or even being so bold as to use the last three floors of the parking garage, which ARE COMEPLETELY EMPTY on the weekends instead of letting their cars get covered in snow, the student reaction remained the same: “This sucks, man.”
As Randomstoned Hippie-Kidd so eloquently put it, it did indeed “suck” for all of the parkers involved: “I was just trying to park, man, you know? But here come the Corporations with all their greed, man, and the government, man, who are just like, infringing on my rights as a human being, dude. I read John Locke, man, I know about the social contract and it says that Man has a right to throw off his chains, you know? So, like, that’s what I’m gonna do…can I borrow, like, 20 bucks?”
Perhaps the most intriguing story from this weekend’s parking ticket-palooza is the one of Public Safety Officer Sgt. Phil Draconian. Sgt. Draconian is in charge of parking enforcement in the student lot and he takes his job very seriously: “Do you know what happens if you let people just park wherever they want? You get a society that’s going to crumble into ruin, that’s what. Death, pestilence, disease, larceny, rampant sexual harassment, prostitution, line-jumpers, old-lady beaters, double-dippers, even surreptitious nose pickers. I’M THE THIN BLUE LINE THAT STANDS BETWEEN ORDER AND DISORDER. I WILL NOT FAIL IN MY DUTY!” Draconian screamed as he raised his ticket pad toward the heavens and showered my now week-old Abercrombie cardigan with fresh globs of spittle.
But in his avid quest to rid the world of renegade motorists and parking ne’er do wells he accidentally committed an act that has caused him a lot of trouble this past week: “I started getting into what we in the business like to call a ‘ticket frenzy.’ I was slamming cars with tickets left and right, upholding the moral order all over the place, and I got a little carried away. I blacked out for approximately ten minutes, and when I came to I saw it. I had ticketed my own cruiser.”
Yes, in his elevated state of butt-kicking justice Sgt. Draconian had written himself 15 tickets for multiple offences, including parking in the student lot without a permit and possession of an unauthorized Hootie and the Blowfish CD, coming out to a total of around $5 million: “Yea, I had forgotten I had that ‘Hootie’ album in there,” stated Sgt. Draconian, “It’s Fairweather Johnson…went triple platinum in ’96 I think. Hell of an album…probably some of their best stuff. Anyway, I’m gonna appeal the tickets and I think I should get off, they’ll understand.”
The Office of Public Safety was not as understanding as Sgt. Draconian believed that they would be. They denied his appeal, while also charging him an extra $100,000 for filing some of his appeal paperwork incorrectly. They also kicked him back on campus.
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