My son is going to college and learning firsthand that ridiculous and counterproductive abuse of authority, not to mention the desire of police and pseudo-police to reorder the world to satisfy their own craving for absolute conformity didn't end in high school. I've always known this, of course, but my son believes that I am fanatical in my own way and that I tend to blow things out of proportion. He is slowly learning that I just call them as I see them.

This adventure begins when his car started smoking badly and making an alarming noise. Never a good sign in terms of automotive health. So as a temporary measure, while we got his car looked at, he borrowed his grandmother's car. But his first class is at 8am and he didn't have time to get a temporary pass until his first break, and 9am.

So let's say when I drove up to swap out cars, I parked his grandmother's car in a VISITOR parking area until he could get a pass that would allow him to park in a STUDENT parking area. By 8:30 there were two tickets on the car. One was for parking in a VISITOR parking area and one was for not having a valid parking pass. At this point I am wondering to what the campus police think the concept of "VISITOR" applies. Surely a car that has no pass, driven maybe by a parent, and parked in a VISITOR parking area? Now, the second ticket, for not having a valid pass, I would have expected if I had parked, say, in a STUDENT parking area without a STUDENT pass.

So I go to the campus security office and after hearing my story the tickets are voided. I am dumdfounded, of course, to discover that apparently what the campus police do is ticket ANY car in the VISITOR parking area on the off-chance that it is one of those sneaky students trying to park for free instead of paying the $175 parking sticker fee.

Now if I were in charge of this goat-rope and I thought maybe sneaky students were putting one over on me, I think I would make note of cars and license plates in VISITOR areas and if I started noticing a lot of repeats I would start to suspect something. I can safely say, though, that this car had never before been on that campus prior to 7:45am that morning. And it was double-ticketed by 8:30am. And did I mention the handicap mirror-hanger that was sitting on the dashboard? I know cops aren't the brightest people in the world—a realization that chills me when I remember that they are the ones carrying around loaded guns—but would it take a detective to figure out maybe there were some clues indicating this wasn't the typical student vehicle?

Okay, so that's an odd enough story. I don't expect the police or even the pseudo-police employed by a pivate university to be analytical equivalents of Sherlock Holmes, but I would feel much better if they demonstrated a modicum of common sense.

But this tale isn't finished yet. It is also apparently against parking regulations on campus to back into a parking slot or even pull through two adjacent ones so that your vehicle is pointed outward. I can find no logical reason for this rule. Maybe someone somewhere decided it was dangerous and inviting accidents to be backing into slots. Why would backing INTO a slot would be more hazardous than backing OUT of one? At least when you're backing in, all of the other cars are stationary. When you're backing out you have to deal with moving cars behind as you back out.

Or maybe the rule is in place because the parking stickers are placed on the back windscreen and the campus police are too lazy or rushed to step out of their patrol vehicle and walk around to confirm the sticker is in place.

As you've no doubt guessed, my son discovered this parking rule by getting a ticket for doing it. In his grandmother's car, with a temporary parking permit, which was displayed in the front dashboard. So in this instance, the campus cop, ever-vigilant for the evil student lawbreaker or scofflaw, would have spied this car without a parking sticker on the read window and would have had to get out and walk around the front to see the temporary permit. That probably already had him pissed off, that he had to get out of his nice air-conditioned patrol car and walk all the way around to the front to see the temporary permit. Maybe he silently vowed to get even for this unintended but nevertheless egregious indignity. So when he saw the car aligned incorrectly, this car that had made him leave his cool patrol car all week long to confirm the temporary permit, he saw his chance. Of course, since the car was FACING him, the temporary pass was easily visible without the tiresome trek around the vehicle. But rules are rules, and even the silliest of rules must be obeyed. The campus police evidently comprise a university profit center, responsible for making money in their own ways.

I understand this all of course. It is the desire of those who are challenged to maintain order for the public good to reverse the rules so that absolute conformity makes their job easier. It is difficult to maintain order when cars are parked both forward AND backward in parking spaces. If they truly had their way, there would be radio-frequency devices on everyone on campus and cameras everywhere, with specific sidewalks and pathways across campus. That would make it even easier to catch people who don't "belong" on campus or even those who do who dare to cut across grassy areas.

The bottom line is this. We employ the police to maintain order in a diverse society. When the police demand conformity to silly rules in order to make their jobs easier, it is incumbent on all of us to ask just what we are employing them for. I don't need to pay someone to force me to conform to questionable rules.

On the bright side, my son is beginning to see that I am not crazy. The bad news, of course, is that he also sees that most people are conformist sheep who ask no questions and follow their designated judas goats without conscious thought. This latest lesson cost him $20, which I think is probably a bargain if he starts questioning stupid authority.