Leave it up to Yuba College to turn a simple task into an annoying event. Obtaining a single day parking pass is not an issue at any other community college in the north valley. However, Yuba College has made acquiring this golden ticket of automotive acceptance a most vexing experience.
Visitors of Yuba College are often confused when parking on campus. Many have been seen driving in circles, looking for daily parking permit dispensers or parking meters. After all, just about every other college in the state has such dispensers and/or parking meters. Finally, when the visitors realize that Yuba College has no such device, frustration sets in.
Yuba College might be the only college in the state that makes you park and leave your vehicle to obtain the one thing that allows you to park and leave your vehicle. The Yuba College website states you must “contact Registration, Building 100B, or the Police Department (to) obtain a $1.00 daily parking pass.” To those who are unfamiliar with the campus, this becomes a puzzling detour to permitted parking.
This means that if you park in the west lot–which is where most students park–and want to obtain a single day parking pass, you must leave your vehicle, walk through the campus, up to the front building, and try your luck at the Registration office.
But if you are pressed for time–and you are because your vehicle is illegally parked–the registration office is not your best option. Often the registration office is full of students trying to drop and register for classes. A faster alternative would be the cashier’s office in building 100B.
However, if the cashier is on her lunch break or if it is after 3 p.m., the office will be closed. In either case you would need to strap on your running shoes and race to the opposite side of the college to acquire your pass from the police department.
Now that you have purchased a parking permit, you must to take a deep breath and sprint clear across the campus to your car, but wouldn’t you know it, when you get to your vehicle, you see a ticket on your windshield.
If you thought that was bad, you should try to get a pass in the evening. After 5 p.m. the registration building, building 100B, and the campus Police Department are all closed. However, ironically enough, the campus police will still be patrolling and ticketing vehicles.
During these hours the college website states that you must “contact the Yuba College Marysville campus Police Department personnel via the call box located at the Yuba College Police Department Office building Number 1600” and “advise the officer that a parking pass is needed.” Then you must wait. You wait for the patrolling officer–who very well could have already ticketed your vehicle for not having a parking permit–to arrive and issue you a parking permit.
It seems that daily permit dispensers–like those found at Sierra College or any other community college that has long since emerged from the primitive slime and evolved into a modern academy–would be the solution to this annoying problem.
The fact that dispenser were not included in the recent million dollar parking lot renovation is surprising. Yuba College administrators have reported that the college does not have the money to install permit dispensers.
And when we watch the campus police patrol the parking lot at speeds of no more than ten miles an hour in the department’s new dodge truck equipped with a hemi, we believe them…and so should you.
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