Parking has always been a topic of conversation throughout the UNT campus. With an acceptance rate of 72.5%, competition for a place to park among commuting students is fierce. But as construction and an influx of new freshmen exacerbate the problem, some students have taken desperate measures.
“Parking is already bad,” said Michael Sorrin, an Economics major, in an interview. “So when I saw some guy trying to squeeze into my parking spot, I pulled my Colt out of my glove box and just started shooting.” Michael then went on to describe how, after he secured his spot. Other students left their vehicles and rushed to the truck of the student he shot, which was now obstructing traffic. He told us that they smashed open the truck’s punctured windshield, removed the injured student’s body from their vehicle, threw them into a grass lot, and then hacked the remains of the truck to pieces using machetes and pipe wrenches. They then used the debris to augment their own weapons and began to fight each other. “They were like piranhas, man. It was inhuman.” When asked how he felt about the potential murder of another student, Michael simply shrugged. “I’m just glad I got to class on time.”
Indeed, scenes such as this are breaking out across the UNT campus. Stories abound of gunfights raging across Lot 20, Engineering majors digging trenches and erecting battlements around a chosen stretch of tarmac. One story tells of a clever drama major who, in the guise of a valet, offered to find a parking spot for tardy commuters, upon which they would use the borrowed car to run down other students on their way to class before crashing the vehicle into a nearby ditch, efficiently eliminating the competition.
One might think that taking the bus to school would be a safer alternative, but as Daniella Castella told us from her hospital bed, that is not the case.
“I thought I could, I guess, game the system by getting to Campus at 5 am. It’s usually pretty empty besides those trench guys who’ll throw pipe bobs at you” Danella paused momentarily, as speaking with a broken jaw made it painful for her to speak “And it was for a little bit, I thought I was so smart, but then my car gets all bright and I look over and I see this giant bus heading straight for me. I tried to get out, but I just got smashed and next thing I know, I wake up bleeding on the side of the road and my car is like 100 feet away rolled up like a little paper ball” Daniella went on to say that Bus Driver fled the scene, before returning 15 minutes later to park his 2007 Kia Soul in Daniella’s now vacant parking spot. “I don’t understand,” continued Daniella, holding back tears, “Don’t bus drivers have, like, their own bus driver parking lots?”
When asked how they would deal with the problem, Campus Police Chief Schafer O’Hara simply said, “If I pretend it’s not happening, then I don’t have to get involved.”
