College guys: Anyone get by w/o parking permits?

[z31maniac]

My last two years in college I had a sport bike, we got to park for free on campus.

Before that we paid the extra to live across the street, so we didn't have to drive.

[Pantless Spency]

ive been getting by but i park in the far off lots.

[mamzak]

I borrowed a pass from a friend and counterfeited it... holograms and all. Worked like a charm! :p

[A_Whelan]

There are a few different tricks that I used and will continue to use until I graduate from university.

1. Jam the meter. This is a good method and would easily work except having an E30 as my only car I didn't do it every day because they would probably catch on and see that an old ass BMW always ended up at a jammed meter. It worked well and sometimes I would stick a note on the meter and say it was jammed so I couldn't pay. They never ticketed my because that would be a dick move.

2. As many others said make parking permit! We had draws every semester and I never ever got one. Some friends did and I took theirs and made one up, stuck it in the window and BAM, problem solved. I did tis one year and it work but then there was a big crack down and they changed the permits so that won't work now.

3. Replacing tickets or putting on old one up. This works sometimes. I did it once and the ticket person came around the next day and gave me another ticket because he realized that the ticket was a day old and just gave me another one. Some campus police are dumb and will skip the car but others will just give you another one, Use With Caution!

4. Service lots or behind buildings. This all depends on where your campus is situated and how much you are willing to walk. We have a bunch of buildings on campus that have dirt lots in the back where they either store stuff or have service bay doors. Scope the place and you may find something off at the edge of campus that doesn't have permit requirements and you will find very few park. This can be risky for breakins but that all depends on what you're willing to risk and the time of day.

If all of these fail there are a few other tips I could pass along. The first is know how much a parking ticket costs. There are different levels and they vary from $15 - $50 for us. Things like double parking, parking without a permit, parking on an expired meter, etc. I forget exactly what the fines are now but I think it was cheaper (like $15) to make your own parking spot and park in a no park zone (the end of a lot in a weird corner or off the pavement and onto grass) than it was to park in a place where you had to have a permit ($25). Pick and choose.

Another method of sticking it to the man (and this varies) would be to challenge the ticket. I parked on a meter that read "Fail" before, meaning it was out of order. I put a quarter in to see if it would change, just to be safe, and it didn't. Awesome! I thought, free parking. I returned later in the day to see that I had a ticket and the meter was working, what the f. I walked into the campus patrol office and told them the situation and the called the person that wrote the ticket. He came in, I repeated the story and he just canceled the ticket and took it off the books. He said that happens a lot. So I've used that one a few times. Try it, the worst that can happen is they call you a liar and you shell out the money for the fine.

Last but not least is something I never tried. My brother had a glove box full of tickets, he just didn't pay them. Every year or so he would get notices in the mail telling him he needed to pay the tickets, but only half would recieve notice. Out of 15 tickets he might have to pay for 4-8. I'm not sure why or how that works but I never wanted to do that and have a pile of tickets to pay for at some point when my money might be low. Has anyone else done this?

That's about it. Working the system is always fun, but YMMV.

[reelizmpro]

Yes, never had a permit my whole college career. I did have a small car (CRX) that I could parallel park in tight spaces that most couldn't get into.

[KenC]

i had a friend who made a fake one. He had a printer, that printed on plastic, so he printed the image on a sheet of plastic, and cut it out to how it is supposed to look, and bam. Counterfeit parking permit. Mind you my campus' parking permit is only 280$ for the year lol

Somebody tried to do that at OHSU. The parking enforcement department attempted to charge them with a Class C Felony. They all have ID numbers on them.

[KenC]

1. Receive a parking ticket for minimal issues (parked in faculty spot, over due meter etc) This is a $25.00 fine at my school, well worth it. Our tickets come in mini yellow envelopes, so what you do is pay the ticket. Keep the envelope and whenever you park put the envelope on your windshield. You have to do it discretely. I would put the wipers on, and when the wiper got near where i could reach around (lol) i would sick the envelope under and the wiper would bring it to the perfect position.

At Oregon they would just give you another one right on top of it.

[Jesse30]

Jesus this really makes me cherish my $25 parking permit.

[FLYNAVY]

At Oregon they would just give you another one right on top of it.

True story......I got a ticket there on campus one time at a metered spot for being a minute late getting back to my car. Heavy enforcement both there and at OSU. I don't know about UO (as I wasn't a student there), but at OSU they not only charged a pretty hefty fee, but they also sold many more passes than there were spots. It got better once they built the big parking structure by Reser at the end of my time there, but I'd say that more often than not, I ended up parking off campus in 2 hr zones, even with a pass.

[NKRoberts]

Jesus this really makes me cherish my $25 parking permit.

yeah mine is $40. so i just buy one.

[Fusion]

What I do in big cities is deliberately look for spots that are off limits. There's always someone with a parking ticket there.
1] park
2] quickly steal their ticket
3] put it under your wiper, covering licence plate number
4] laugh your ass off

Works every fucking time. No cop will ever re-check his own work.

[nickflic3]

My school is surrounded 360 degrees with parking lots and a big avenue leading to all entrances so nowhere really to park your car off Campus. I just paid $102 for a Fall Permit ($85 last quarter WTF!!) after I got a $45 ticket (I parked for 2 minutes to pay school fees; came out to the officer writing a ticket 2 cars down) This was my first ticket after getting away with it many times; I tried things like parking in bum fuk nowhere and reusing $5 daily receipt like permits (make it look like it blew off your dash or turned up side down lol)

I'm not sure about your school but I would use many of the suggestions listed and see how it goes first quarter. Good luck man, and welcome to SoCal lol

[Kershaw]

umbc is mostly a commuter campus. free parking passes.

i always laughed at my ex that had to spend $400/year at umcp.

[nickpro]

freeride, what water sport do you do?

[unrlmth]

freeride, what water sport do you do?

He does crew. And IIRC the parking pass is $1300 for the year at UW.