I, like many juniors living up on York Hill, have a car on campus. As some students on Mt. Carmel may or may not know, in order to get in and out of the parking garage you need to tap your Q-Card.  This, obviously, is to ensure that random people do not park there. It also happens to be the university’s evil plan to trap me inside the parking garage on days that I forget to bring my Q-Card.

This happened to me last week: I always drive my car to my night classes, however, after the 10 to 15 minute walk to the parking garage from my dorm room, I realized I forgot to bring my Q-Card with me. I thought maybe I could borrow someone else’s to get through the gate, but nobody was around.

Honestly there are few things more frustrating than being trapped in a parking garage simply because you don’t have your Q-Card. I felt like such an idiot for forgetting it and even more of one when I realized I would have to give up my hopes of getting out, re-park my car and take the shuttle. Why can’t I be granted permission from the Public Safety Gods to leave the parking garage? Who designed these gates? It makes me feel like a prisoner trying to escape from jail.

Not going to lie, I briefly considered driving right through the gate and not looking back, I probably should have. I ended up being close to 15 minutes late to class just because I couldn’t leave the parking garage. There should be a place to type in our ID number for occasions like this to help students avoid being late.

Or if that doesn’t work, then why can’t we use pressure-censored gates? These gates open when you slowly approach them and could easily solve the lack of Q-Card problem. No matter how you look at it, there are so many ways to prevent such scenarios from even occurring. Just sayin’, Quinnipiac.