It was the one evening I had managed to carve out all semester, and it ended up costing me $234. The one night I wasn’t in the newsroom at a meeting, working, editing or pretending fluorescent lights are cozy. After hardly seeing my friends this semester, I was so excited to have a calm dinner at our favorite, slightly-falling-apart Chinese restaurant. Nothing fancy, just a small moment of peace in an otherwise stressful life.
I pulled up at my friend’s apartment, parked in the empty lot in an unreserved spot and headed inside — just like I’d done a thousand times before. We were drinking tea and laughing until the last member of our little friend group ran in yelling my name like the house was on fire.
“DIYA, YOUR CAR IS BEING TOWED!”
Few phrases can shatter a college students’ nervous system faster. “You’re being evicted,” “your tuition went up” or “the test was today,” all compete. I ran outside in shoes that weren’t mine, heart pounding, to find the empty space where my car had been. Gone. The car I rely on for class, work — literally to function had been towed.
It stunned me that it was so normal for the smallest slip-up to trigger such a harsh punishment. Somewhere along the way, we traded community for enforcement and grace for “gotcha.” And I don’t know about you, but the longer I’m in college, the more I notice it: whether it’s parking, paperwork or policies, the response to a harmless mistake is never grace — it’s a fine, a fee and a fail. And honestly, as students juggling school, work and survival in messy Google calendars, zero margin for error is exhausting.
I wasn’t in a reserved spot. I wasn’t hurting or inconveniencing anyone. A minor mishap in registration was all it took.
No warning. No note. No conversation. Just someone from a tow company — accurately named a “wrecker service” — literally picking up my car, stealing it and charging me $234 to get it back.
And the thing is — this isn’t the first time I’ve been slapped with a consequence that wildly outweighed the “offense.” My sophomore year, I got a ticket on campus for parking in a spot that apparently wasn’t a spot, but definitely used to be one. Yes, the lines were faded — maybe they were practically invisible, but I saw them, and so did five other people. We all got ticketed. Instead of taking the fact that six cars were in the wrong place as a sign that maybe the spots weren’t clearly marked, all of us were given fines and marks on our records. Because God forbid tired college students during finals season park in between white lines no one has bothered to repaint since the Bush administration.
Looking back, it wasn’t about the ticket. It was about the message: You messed up, whether you knew about it or not, and so you deserve to pay for it. No conversation, no community, just consequence.
This isn’t about cars or parking (Okay, maybe a little.) But it’s mostly about how we have normalized and, maybe even enjoy, consequence over grace.
From campus fines to city fees to the endless little rules of life you just can’t break, the message is the same: Make a mistake, and you’ll pay — even if it doesn’t really matter. Even if you’re not hurting or harming everyone. All under the mythical guise of “Well if everyone did it, maybe then it’d hurt.”
Sure, rules exist for a reason, but there’s a difference between thoughtful enforcement and needless action. A fine, a ticket or a tow shouldn’t be the first response. People aren’t robots, and life isn’t perfect. Take my car being towed: no one was hurt or inconvenienced, and I had what I thought was a valid parking pass. Yet “order” was enforced with zero conversation, warning or grace. That’s not protecting a system on the verge of being broken — that’s prioritizing rules over humanity.
Maybe it’s time we traded a few penalties for patience and a little enforcement for empathy. Community and kindness are strengths, not weaknesses, and grace doesn’t make the world crumble. Next time someone slips up in your life — whether it’s a faded parking line or a missed deadline — hold back the fine, the fee and the fail. Take a breath, and try a little understanding. It might save someone’s day, sanity or at least their car.
