Ballot or Ticket?

Car owners are parking on borrowed time. Only through the grace of the Cambridge police department are they able to leave their automobiles on the city streets overnight without punishment. City ordinances authorize the police to ticket offending cars or even to haul them away. With a complete file of registrations on hand in University Hall and open for city use, even out-of-state owners are now within the long reach of the law.

The University and the Student Council seemed to have solved the problem three weeks ago when they announced joint approval of plan to use the Soldiers Field parking lot us huge, overnight refuge for undergraduate automobiles. Since that time, the project has languished in the Council files, and the students have become complacent in the face of an apparent lack of action on the part of the police.

Before it will give the final green light to the mass use of the Soldiers Field lot, the Corporation has demanded tangible evidence that a large number of undergraduates will participate. It has taken the Student Council three weeks to prepare the poll and will take another three weeks before the University can prepare the lot. Meanwhile, the police captains are planning to crack down on illegal parking in the Harvard Square area, and as the Council itself has said: "Once they crack down, it will not be safe to leave a car on the street." If in the next few weeks, car owners are caught without parking space in the midst of a vast enforcement campaign, the blame will rest on student Council negligence.

But shrewdies who think that since they are getting away with overnight parking now, they will continue to do so had better learn a lesson from their brethren who tried to insinuate women into choice, but masculine, seats in the Stadium cheering sections. Law enforcement has a way of tightening up that catches even the clever.

If undergraduates decide to take a chance on the mercy of the city of Cambridge and turn down the Corporation's parking lot as too inconvenient or too expensive, they will be doing themselves and their fellow automobilists a great disservice. For the University would be only too willing to abandon the lot in the face of apparent apathy towards its use, and the time will come when undergraduates will be only too glad to use it.

Police headquarters assures the College that it will ultimately enforce the ruling. The parked cars make side-streets virtually impassible for fire fighting equipment at night. With snows coming on, narrow streets will appear even narrower. Students who do not have garage space for their autos must realize that they are in a very precarious position and that the parking lot across the river, no matter how inconvenient it may seem in the midst of police leniency, will be a welcome respite from fines and towing charges. The Council, too, must do its part and substitute quick, unaccustomed action for dawdling neglect. The College has a problem; the Council has a solution. Why not solve the problem?