It seems that the ANU has a bit of a vendetta against cars. This is perfectly reasonable, of course. Cars are driven by plebeians with ‘part time jobs’ who ‘can’t afford to pay $400 a week for a Unilodge room without a bathroom.’ The obvious way to remove these blights on the face of our campus is to take away the carparks, because that is how inelastic demand works. If you are one of the selfish people who insists upon being financially unable to live a reasonable distance from campus, then shame on you. However, you might also be interested in these handy tips on how to park your car, because honestly they’re the most realistic options you have left.
- Pretend that your car is just another quirky member of the Pop-Up Village family. The key here is confidence. Drive right into the middle of Union Court and stick up a sign advertising ‘Artisanal $40 Paleo Coffee’ or something. If you don’t want to disappoint anyone who was actually hoping to get a drink, leave a bag of unground coffee beans and some cartons of milk on the ground and claim that your product is ‘a deconstructed experience’.
- Rent an oval from ANU Sport for the entire rest of the year and use it as parking space. If enough people chipped in it might end up costing less than what ANU Parking charges. (Full disclaimer: this is only 86 per cent a joke).
- Park on the lawns out the front of the Law School. Law students are to parking inspectors what garlic is to vampires. We have taken all of those lectures about human rights and applied them to our own white, suburban, Longchamp bag-carrying lives. No parking inspector is going to go within a hundred metres of us, lest their office get flooded with letters about ‘the violation of my liberty’ and ‘this ticket is discriminatory’. Parking your car on our turf will guarantee your safety. You might, however, get a nasty note from some kid named Maxwell who uses the word ‘thus’ in everyday conversation and is going to sue you because the glare of the sun reflecting off your car has ruined his eyesight.
- Just convert all of Clunies Ross Street into an unofficial ANU carpark. The road that runs between the backyards of the colleges and Black Mountain has recently (thanks to construction work) become absurdly congested during peak hour. After I spent ten minutes moving forward by about six metres last week, I’ve realised that nobody would notice if we all simply parked our cars, ran our errands, and returned several hours later.
- Park illegally, and then disguise your car by printing out hundreds of long letters protesting the demolition of Bruce Hall and pasting them all to the exterior. University officials are just going to act like they can’t see anything at all.
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