I have recently made the conclusion that college students are the worst car parkers in Burlington. Despite UVM’s plan to have more people living on campus and less people driving to class in the morning, they still do not have enough parking spaces for the regular working staff and faculty of surround-ing facilities. I noticed that most of the spaces near campus were taken up by large SUVs they were evenly spaced about 4-6 ft. from the cars in front of them and behind them. First I asked myself why this anomaly occurs on a daily basis. For a while I tricked myself into believing that the cars leave and come all day and larger cars leave and smaller cars take the space, thus the large gap. It soon came to my realization that the people who get these spots close to campus arrive at 8 a.m. and stay there for the duration of class and there is no excuse. My second explanation seemed more plausible. Students arrive at campus af-ter a long night of boozing and whatever else they may have done. They are tired and in to much of a hurry to take the extra two minutes it takes to put their car in the space properly. It can easily be said that many of these kids with large SUVs do not know how to parallel park but when they are looking for a space in the morning how can they not see that there would be three or four more spaces if people were more considerate. What boggles my mind most on this subject are the parking enforcement “officers”. In Burlington you can get towed for being a foot over the “No Parking Beyond This Point” sign or be-ing in the vicinity of a fire hydrant. When I say in the vicinity I mean they leave 20 ft. open for a fire hydrant because now people are too scared to park near them. In many towns they put up big reflective spacers on other side of the hydrants so that you know how close you can park. In Burlington, no one really knows exactly where to park around a fire hydrant, much less how far from the car in front of them. In my opinion, the parking enforce-ment people should spend less time towing people for minor discrepancies such as parking a little over the line and focus more on the people parking within the lines. One would think that if everyone parked the way they should then over-parking would not occur. So when you see that little white car with flashing lights on top roll by, not to worry-they wont write you a ticket for being 3 ft. from the curb and 4 ft. from the person in front of you. It comes down to the fact that there is not enough parking in Burlington for the influx of students that are in town during the winter months. Burlington tries very had to ignore that they are a college town and this seems to be because the college stu-dents disrespect what they are given from the community (aka every parking space from UVM to the North End).