P.A.C.E. stands for Parking And Code Enforcement. If you’re a student, employee, or visitor at Michigan State University, P.A.C.E. is the organization responsible for monitoring the parking meters and garages scattered around campus. You’ll see them on foot with portable citation devices in their hands, or driving around in trucks labeled “motorist assistant vehicle.”

I think I speak for everyone at MSU when I extend my gratitude to P.A.C.E. for their exemplary service to us all. In fact, I can’t think of another organization that operates with such a high level of focus, dedication, and efficiency.

See, I was running late for my job this morning, so instead of parking in my usual space just off campus, I decided to park at a meter nearer to where I needed to be. I put in 75 cents, which buys 30 minutes—the maximum amount of time allowed. Returning within half an hour was a little unfeasible, but I hurried and managed to get back to the meter not long after that. Uncannily, not only had I already been ticketed, but, judging from the time stamp, the ticket was written literally within a minute of my time expiring.

Oh, I knew there was a good chance I’d be ticketed, and seeing a ticket flapping under everyone else’s wiper blade on the way to my vehicle was a bad omen, but this was something else entirely. These people are ticket-writing ninjas. They’re like a SWAT team, called in especially to handle our most important parking enforcement crises. In fact, I’ve dramatized their exploits in the following image:

Heart-pounding, isn’t it? There’s Jack Bauer, there’s MacGyver, there’s Batman, and then there’s the current P.A.C.E. officer on duty. (Usually an underpaid student goon with apparently no regard whatsoever for the social suicide that the job entails. I, for one, respect that kind of self-esteem.) Prior to this morning, I had no idea they were so tightly coordinated or precisely timed. No idea whatsoever! I wasn’t enlightened until the final second of my parking time clicked by and the agents of P.A.C.E., exactly on cue, rappelled down from their quietly hovering Boeing Chinook. With a machine gun tempo, they slapped ticket after ticket on everybody’s windshield and vanished back into the cold morning clouds from whence they came, so quickly that any onlooking students could have easily blamed the sightings on their own excessive drug use.

Compassion is, of course, a human weakness that is filtered out early on in P.A.C.E. training, which takes place in a reinforced bunker beneath campus that can only be entered through camouflaged access points. Even in the event that you can successfully narrate the exact 334 character passcode, your body might be torn to leaflets by the machine gun emplacements to the left, right, top, and bottom of the triple-layered steel doors. All it takes is for the guards or their dogs to sense even a hint of trouble, and your body is given more zippers than a Levi’s factory.

It is of no concern to them that the only non-metered, non-hourly parking options for non-staff are the far-flung commuter lots. It is of no concern to them that the bus ride between those lots and campus, already at least 10 minutes in length, has been increased more than twofold by indefinite heavy construction. It is of no concern to them that none of the parking options are priced especially within reason, and that their exorbitant citations further compound that expenditure. And it is of no concern to them that every expense the students must pay is in addition to MSU’s tuition costs, which puts many of its students into insurmountable debt by the time they graduate.

No, P.A.C.E. will make no allowances or exceptions. They must do their job, and they do it well.

Thank you, P.A.C.E. For everything.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Use the comment feature, or visit the discussion thread.