Students on campus have very little ability to park in certain lots on campus (ex: Towers, Terraces, Circles, Park, etc), and as a result many (often struggling financially) students have been ticketed for using the only parking available (in Blue Lots mainly). Considering that students pay between 100-500 for parking throughout each year, it makes absolutely no sense that 1) Parking is limited and based on a "first come first serve" rule and 2) Anybody should be ticketed $30-40 simply for parking in a spot a few spots away from a red lot, for example. Most schools charge $20 at most for parking in a spot that isn't permitted to a student, whereas Ithaca (a smaller liberal arts school that claims to care about students finances/income issues) charges upwards of $35-40. I, as well as many of my peers, have been ticketed time and time again when the only spots that are available are in the blue lots (unless you want to walk a mile or so up and down a hill to get to class). A friend of mine was actually once charged for parking at Cerrache despite having noted chronic issues if that's telling enough! It is completely unfair to expect students WHO OWN A CAR ALREADY to walk from a far away lot (or from their residence in some cases) when they are paying hundreds just to park on campus alone with their car. Otherwise what are we paying for? In addition, blue lots are almost usually empty meanwhile red lots are overflowing with cars no matter what time of the day it is. When I emailed Parking Services about this, they just made poor excuses to avoid saying they were scamming students out of their money,  telling me that "we have enough parking because they opened up 50 extra spaces a year ago", despite also opening up parking to all the freshman (from Lot Z to being able to park anywhere on campus). Even with expanding by 50 spaces, the amount of freshman also parking on campus (which just happened in the last 2 school years) now outweighs this ability to have "extra parking". I propose that Ithaca either expands their parking to fit more cars (ex: allowing students to park in another lot or Blue Lot), or at the very least lower the cost of tickets greatly when parking in a Blue Lot. It is unfair to demand of students to do all these things to scam students out of their money (a repetitive theme over the last few years with housing, schooling during Covid, etc) yet provide inadequate parking. 

If things change, students will have an easier time getting to class, parking in closer spots, and avoiding getting ticketed. If things stay the same, students will continue having to deal with walking extremely far or getting charged for parking, which again, is something we already paid hundreds for in the first place. 

I honestly wish I had put up this petition last year, because it seems this has been a worsening issue in the last few years (at least since Covid and coming back from my perspective). Something should have been done about this a year ago, if not several.