Small Things And Big Things

I am reminded, as I read about summary judgements for on-campus sexual assaults...

That universities have never particularly cared about justice or due process.

I am also reminded that if you'll lie about a small thing, you will also lie about a large thing.

My personal experience was with a parking ticket at Iowa State.

I was informed, via registered letter, that I had an unpaid parking ticket.

I thought that odd, because I always went way out of my way to park someplace legal.

So I went to the campus cop shop to find out what the Hell.

My car at the time was a red 83 Mercury Lynx sedan.  The car on the ticket was a tan Plymouth Reliant...  It's license plate was almost the same as mine... Except mine had a 5 where theirs had an S...  And I had an Iowa plate and they had Delaware...

Near as I can tell, they looked up the plate number on their system, which couldn't look up out of state plates and transposed the 5 for an S and got my address to mail the ticket to.

Wanna guess what I discovered while attempting to fight the ticket?

"Wasn't me, didn't do it," is not a defense.

Additionally the fact that I was mailed the ticket also negated that it wasn't even my car parked illegally.

Literally, there was no defense to getting a ticket from the ISU Campus Keystones.  Which is unfair because the issuing officer got the make, model, color, number of doors and plate right.

So I paid the ticket with money I'd have rather spent on something else.

Unrelated... there's a story about why I bought a schrader-valve tool and how much it costs to get your '84 Plymouth Reliant coupe out of impound for failure to move it to the alternate side of the street during snow days...  Spoiler, it's a lot more than a parking ticket and "I had four flat tires" is not a defense.