I Almost Got Away With Scamming my University
By: Liberty Ann
Tags: Life Lessons, College, Humor, Creativity, This Happened To Me

I Almost Got Away With Scamming my University

Just your typical college experience

Photo by Omer Rana on Unsplash

What I did was a felony. It resulted in a $500 fine, 10 hours of community service, and an extensive essay on why I did it and how ashamed I am (not their exact prompt, but you get the idea).

I disliked most aspects of my college experience. I was paying for it out of my own pocket, even on top of grants it was still incredibly expensive.

On top of that, classes were uninterestingly cookie-cutter and maneuvering through the sea of distressed 18–20-somethings almost every day never made up for how it was supposed to help me with my life.

The only parts I genuinely enjoyed was going to the gym between classes (it was already included in the tuition) and one young, hip professor who I got quite close with (I even tried to set her up with my boyfriend at the time’s co-worker. They never met, which I’m relieved about).

The premise

One aspect I did not miss was parking. It was an ongoing battle to secure a parking spot every day, regardless of the time of day when class was in session.

An annual permit was $150 and at the time and I did not think it was worth it. I was only a part time student and I never lingered around campus any longer than I had to.

Instead, I’d either pay the parking meter (which was $2.50 an hour I believe, only if I had one class that day) or get a weekly pass for $9.

Now get this, whenever I tried to get a monthly pass for less than $15, they claimed it to be sold out. How exactly does one sell out of parking permits for a specific time frame when the difference is only a few bucks?

If I were to pay for a day, a week or a month, I’m still a student who has to come every day and would need to park somewhere (maybe not every day, to be honest I played hooky too often, but that’s besides that point).

What kind of twisted logic makes it practical that weekly parking is $9 whereas monthly would be $13.75?

I could not justify ever paying something like that, especially since tuition was already exorbitant. This fueled my overall pettiness towards the university.

The Idea

One day it hit me.

A creative lighting bolt of a lifetime (at least for a petty college student). It was equal parts cunning and ingenious.

I had just purchased another weekly parking pass for $9. It looks like this (no, I did not go to University of Kentucky):

Image via UKNOW

I looked at it and randomly thought, hey this looks like a lottery scratch off.

Then that thought led me to those scented scratch off stickers, you know, the ones that have a scent and when you scratched them off it revealed what fruit or whatever stinky thing it was supposed to be.

Basically, all these thingamajigs that had one thing in common: they all had that gray surface that can be easily scratched off to reveal what was underneath.

I got excited, as if I had just discovered fire for the first time.

I quickly grabbed my phone and searched up “scratch off stickers.” It yielded results like this:

Image by author

These stickers looked the exact same used in the scratch off parking permits.

I thought, if I could cut the stickers to cover the month/day I scratched off then I’d be able to re-use the same pass *evil laugh.*

I just had to see if it would work.

I ordered a pack of the cheapest stickers I could find the same day, it was less than $5.

Once the week on the parking permit I bought was up, I meticulously cut two stickers to cover the month/day of when I first bought it. It took a few tries and stickers to get them shaped just right before carefully placing them on the permit. Then I scratched off the subsequent date.

Up close, it didn’t look perfect, you could see the indentations that were underneath the freshly applied sticker from the first time it was scratched off (I made a mental note to be more careful with scratching off the subsequent dates).

However, from afar, especially if it’s hanging on the neck of the rearview mirror, it looked almost impossible to distinguish if someone were to take a quick glance through the windshield. It was glorious.

The next day, I pulled up to my university and crossed my fingers.

Yep, it worked. Flawlessly.

It wasn’t because I was too cheap to pay $9 a week for parking and how I kept being denied a monthly pass that was more cost effective (definitely not saying it was the trade off for all those asiago bagels I heavily consumed after my gym sessions).

I believed in the notion that college was scamming me, and I scammed them right back. I kept doing it, and nobody suspected a thing.

I had successfully used my parking permit without getting caught by anybody, even my friends (also students) who rode in my car never took a second look at the altered pass.

Score one for the petty college student, zero for the for-profit university.

The Downfall

Some months later, the fall semester was coming to an end.

I’ll be honest, how I got caught is embarrassing. My deceit somehow caught up to me. It was all because of a blueberry muffin.

Yes, a Starbucks blueberry muffin.

Recall how one of the only memorable experiences I had in college was how close I got to one professor. It was my second semester having her, and she didn’t teach any other courses that would fit in my academic plan at the time.

The first time I met her I came early to her class, so I decided to eat the blueberry muffin I had with me. Being the outgoing and humorous person she was, she struck a conversation with me based around the blueberry muffin. This conversation marked the begginning of a great student/professor relationship.

Fast forward a year, it was time for me to informally say goodbye to her as my professor. I finished the final exam for her class and we quietly said our farewells as the rest of the class continued picking their brains and mindlessly filling in scantron bubbles.

That was it. I had the chance to leave campus right then and there but no, I had to waddle all the way to Starbucks to get her the same blueberry muffin I had the same day we met. It’s worth noting that I have an unreasonable knack for getting people small gifts that relate to an inside joke, even if it gives me some degree of trouble in procuring it (it’s a curse).

Just my luck, the Starbucks line was out the door. I diligently waited.

Her reaction made waiting in line and extending my time on campus worth it, and we said our real, final goodbyes on a humorous note. I could finally leave.

Aside from doing that for her, I would rarely hang around campus once I’d completed everything — which is the irony of what would happen next.

When I approached my car there was a bright yellow boot on one of the front wheels. The worst thing that could possibly happen, happened.

There was an envelope stuffed with papers under my windshield wipers: one had a ticket of $500 (the actual fine for forging a permit), another ticket for $25 (for the actual parking violation, which they could’ve held off on issuing, greedy bastards), and a letter with instructions on what to do next. I was shocked.

I was even more shocked that the timestamp of the tickets were from less than 15 minutes ago! All because I wanted to get my favorite professor a muffin.

In retrospect, I should’ve gotten the hell out of there the first chance I had.

The Consequences

The day was drawing to an end and I wanted nothing more than to just leave campus already. I followed the instructions in the letter, it said to go to to the parking and transportation office, which was all the way on the other side of campus.

Once I reached the office they wouldn’t talk to me unless I had the parking permit in question, which I had left back in my car.

I had to walk across campus again, which I didn’t mind because it helped me mentally prepare for when I’d get arrested (not joking).

Once I had everything they needed, the receptionist brought me to an office where two stone faced men sat quietly, waiting. They didn’t want to be there any more than I did, it was the last day of the semester for crying out loud and it was almost quittin’ time.

The man behind the desk was the head of parking and transportation and the other man was one of the parking security officers who had caught me.

After the formal introductions, the man behind the desk picked up my altered parking permit and marveled at it. He didn’t seem angry, only intrigued. He asked me how I did it. I complied and told them step by step how I achieved it.

I even had the scratch off stickers in my bag which I gave to him, which he equally marveled at. I remember saying, these stickers are completely legal, I bought them off Amazon.

The two men were dumbfounded, they’ve never seen anything like it before. In my head I was giggling and the corners of my mouth would curve to form a formidable smirk.

What I did was illegal, yet impressive that I was able to get away with it for that long. I did this for almost a whole semester. The parking security officer was extremely flushed that nobody had caught it earlier.

Eventually, they ended with stating my punishments. The head of transportation said what I did was a felony, but since it pertained to the university it’d be handled internally. I had to pay the fines to the transportation department and then I’d have to get in touch with the student conduct office to arrange other retributions (which would be community service and a lengthy essay).

Since the semester was literally already over, they put a hold on the consequences until the spring semester started, which I had already enrolled (it very nice of them to show mercy). If I failed to uphold my end, I was banned from enrolling any further.

At the end of the day I was just happy to not get arrested.

I had almost gotten away with it. When I returned back to my car the boot was, thankfully, already removed.

I drove off into the imminent sunset — after almost hitting another student in the parking lot and waiting in traffic for a few minutes.