OU Parking services wanted to use a new parking device to get students to pay for overdue tickets, angry tweets from students prevented that.

The University of Oklahoma’s parking services rolled out a replacement for towing cars against repeat fine offenders and within hours, thanks to angry tweets, they issued another statement rescinding their decision. The Barnacle, a parking device that obstructs the view of cars it’s placed on, would force students to pay at least $185 dollars before they could move their car.

Here’s the series of tweets from implementation to backpedaling within hours.

The steps a student has to take to get a Barnacle on their car is lengthy. After they issue the third parking ticket, students have 30 days to pay all tickets before they issue a warning that the Barnacle will be deployed.

It should be noted that while upfront costs, replacing towing with the Barnacle increases from $150 to $185, when students return the yellow Barnacle to OU parking services, that $185 is lowered to $135, so using the Barnacle is overall a cheaper option.

It’s the upfront costs that rubbed OU students the wrong way. Students already pay for tuition to the tune of $11,000 a year, a $300 parking permit, housing, books, food, and other misc. fees. An extra $35 in upfront costs to get their main transportation back could be the difference of having a car or not.

While the parking services, like most colleges, is a separate entity from the university, the idea of forking over more money to get their cars back, with no student input in the decision process, was a step too far.

It’s worth mentioning that among the replies on Twitter were several replies from people who’ve successfully defeated the Barnacle through various low-tech methods. It’s safe to say that if the Barnacle was implemented, the chance of one or several becoming vandalized was only a matter of time.

As a handful of articles on this debacle in Oklahoma have mentioned, time and effort implementing a towing alternative is better spent towards a better public transportation system more than anything.

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