Don't clamp NMMU's style

A student's car is clamped and I remembered all over again how one negative thing can undo all the good that's been done ...

I don't know if it's my imagination or not, but the traffic coming onto NMMU's North and South campuses for the start of the academic year does not appear to be as bad as previous years.

Perhaps there are fewer cars on the road (I doubt this); perhaps students have taken heed of requests to leave home earlier (I doubt this too); or perhaps they're so paraat this year that they have already formed lift clubs. The latter thought should not be easily dismissed. Petrol, after all, is now selling at R11.92 a litre!

I would like to believe the drive in to campus (methinks 12 000 cars visit the campuses daily) is due to the hard work of the university's sole traffic official and protection services staff. 

Even before the rush began this week, these folk were experimenting with beacons in filtering traffic up University Way (which runs alongside both campuses) and have been controlling the traffic lights at the turn-off to North Campus. Like good Boy Scouts they were prepared.

So there's still a bit of a wait in Admiralty Road, but it's nothing compared to previous years when a 10-minute crawl through Summerstrand suburbia was the norm.

I was ready to sing the praises of this support team when I spied a lowly student car clamped in the middle of the North Campus car park.

His or her crime?

Said little red student car had apparently rolled back from its parking spot and was blocking the thoroughfare between the rows of parked cars. Actually, you could still drive around it. It certainly had not been parked there purposely and the parking space in front of it was empty ... yes, on the face of it, someone had forgotten to pull up the hand brake.   

But there it was, clamped.  

Instead of punishing the student with a R50 fine, wouldn't it have been better to have simply pushed the car back or even forward and left a note on the windscreen?

You'd have made him or her an instant friend of NMMU. You missed a great opportunity. But instead you clamped our style in trying to be a university that cares and understands.