October 10, 2009
The Thinking Behind It Is the Thing
Most folks, including Marc, seem to agree that opposing $5 per year parking for students at a Warwick school is unreasonable but is likely to have its roots in frustration with a system that has slowly but surely been bleeding educational programs in order to bloat employee contracts. The aspect of the story that strikes me is the professed thinking behind the program:
Secondly, [Toll Gate Principal Stephen] Chrabaszcz said, the parking privilege would be used as a way to discourage tardiness. Any student who is late for more than 10 days would lose their parking privileges for 30 days.
So the punishment for tardiness will entail increasing the difficulty of arriving in the classroom on time. The foolishness of such a program on its face suggests that it's more of a post hoc excuse for exempting the well-paid grown-ups to whom justifications of safety and orderliness of parking would also apply.
Why does removing parking privileges make it harder to get to class on time? You take the school bus then. Know how embarrassing that is for a senior? The first time you see or hear of a senior losing parking privileges and being faced with two choices, take the bus or get to school with a friend, you know they'll all be on time after that. The last thing the friend will want is to lose their own privileges and then possibly end up on the bus themselves.
As a separate matter, I don't know what revoking the parking privilege has to do with the $5 charge. Can't they revoke the privilege even if it's free? Don't students need a parking pass anyway? We needed them at my school to park.
Posted by: Patrick at October 10, 2009 10:43 PMI actually support this state revenue generation program with its post hoc rationalizations for the educational value it will have for the kids.
It will prepare them for when they grow older and get violently raped by the state each month in the form of exorbitant and arbitrarily enforced parking/speeding tickets for simply trying to get to their work each day, park, and then return home again to see their family. One of the many hidden taxes they will come to learn about the hard way while being informed by a glorified tax collector in a patrol car that it is for their own good.
They should learn early that government is not their friend and only sees them as a dollar sign.
Posted by: Dan at October 10, 2009 11:17 PM