Written by Ellen Swain
July 16 marks the 80th anniversary of first installation of the parking meter (1935), brought to us by news reporter and inventor Carl C. Magee of Oklahoma City. (1) (Thanks Carl.)
As someone who has paid many campus parking tickets over the years, I will not be marking the occasion; I’m sure I am not alone. Illinois students and staff are all too familiar with the appearance of that annoying white ticket wedged in their windshield wiper.
Before parking meters made their debut in Champaign-Urbana in the 1940s, (2) Illinois students negotiated other automotive-related restrictions. In September 1926, UI Council on Administration, the campus decision-making body, instituted a regulation prohibiting undergraduate students to use cars on campus without permission.(3)
William O’Dell ’31 vividly recounts his encounter with this rule in a 2001 interview for the SLC Archives:
“Oh I remember the [rule] that made me a 1931 graduate instead of a 1930 graduate. When I got kicked out of school!
There was a “no car” rule at the University at that time and undergraduates could not drive cars unless they were employed. I got my parents’ permission to take the family car from LaGrange down to Champaign for a big Spring dance weekend…this made travel with my girlfriend from one fraternity to another easier and to go to many different fraternity parties during on weekend.
I was driving down Green Street with three or four people, in route to Chicago or LaGrange, to return my car and then take the train back to Champaign on Monday. There was a note in my mailbox from Dean [of Men] Thomas Arkle Clark asking me to come into his office at 11:30 the next morning. This would strike terror into anyone’s heart!
And so I showed up and my interview with him was probably forty seconds long, and the message was that I was being expelled from the University for the balance of the semester for violating the no car rule! This was in May, two weeks, three weeks away from my degree…Very unfair, in retrospect, a horrible penalty for such a relatively minor infraction. [In my opinion!!]
[Dean Clark] named the people in the car and what direction I was going down Green Street– the rumor, of course, around the campus was that Thomas Arkle Clark had a spy ring, and that had never been documented but I don’t know that it had ever been completely denied either! In any event, Thomas Arkle Clark was a feared dean. I had tremendous respect for him, but that was the rule and regulation that I do remember.
And my father, I will give him credit… I had lied to my parents really. I told them that there would be no problem; that this was just for a weekend. He never berated me in any way, but he did say, ‘Despite your actions, I will give you a graduation present, and that will be another semester in school so you can get your degree, because it is essential if you want to be a success that you get that degree.’
No, I didn’t want to go back. I said, ‘Dad I don’t need a degree. I am a college man now. I don’t need anything more.’ And he said to me, ‘You go back and get that degree or you will regret it the rest of your life because you will always have to explain why you didn’t complete your schooling!’ So I did go back for the following semester. Of course, in retrospect it was great advice, but he never turned me over his knee and thrash me or anything.”(4)
The “no car” rule gradually loosened. By 1955, only freshman under twenty-one or students on probation were prohibited from having cars on campus.(5) Parking meters… well, they are another story.
(1) See: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/worlds-first-parking-meter-installed
(2) Undergraduate Regulations, RS 25/7/801. Daily Illini, January 24, 1940 for Champaign and June 8, 1946 for Urbana.
(3) Daily Illini, June 18, 1929
(4) William O’Dell to Ellen Swain, Ft. Myers, Florida, March 18, 2001, RS 35/3/49 , Archives Alumni Oral History Project Files, 2000-2001.
(5) Daily Illini, Sept. 16, 1955