Just Practising
What an enterprising student. A criminology student, no less. Testing the boundaries of legalities she does not agree with. Not when they impact on her bottom line, in any event.
Isn't that what the criminal class, as a matter of fact, does? Ignores laws the better to practise their covert, illegal and often very profitable enterprise called law-breaking? Is this Carleton University student studying criminology to better understand the phenomenon, and seeking to practise law-breaking herself to discover the thrills and profit inherent in it for its practitioners?
After all, public transportation facilities are meant to convey people from point A to point B and all other points in between and beyond. Public conveyance is a costly business. The vast network of infrastructure points, the convoys of trains and buses and the upkeep of stations, the hiring of public transit workers, all of that costs hugely.
Much of the cost associated with operating a functional public transportation system is municipally subsidized; that's tax money that homeowners and businesses pay for services that the entire community enjoys.
Of course transit users also have to shell out for their monthly passes, and they too are quite costly. Geared, largely, to the services provided. And some societal demographics get lucky, as ways are found to pool resources to service specific communities in a more economical manner. Senior citizens always get breaks of one kind or another. And so too do students whose disposable incomes are fairly finite.
So it was that a special arrangement was agreed upon with local universities, to launch a low-cost full-semester transit pass subsidized by the entire student body through the institution of a mandatory $290 fee added to tuition costs. An agreeable arrangement, one might imagine, but not everyone agrees.
Those students who live on campus and who don't require the use of public transit feel ill done by, being charged for a pass they are issued but don't have a need to utilize. And some of them attempt to sell their Uni-pass to earn back that $290 they had to shell out. It is illegal to do so.
The city's transit authority has problems with enterprising student entrepreneurs who even, cleverly, use first-rate copiers to produce fraudulent tickets which they sell on line. As a result, and to try to nip the practise, OC Transpo peruses sites like Craig's lists and Kijiji, where they see the advertisements students place for the sale of transit passes.
It is illegal to sell a pass that has been issued to a specific individual - or to loan it out to someone other than the legal holder. Without the U-Pass, students would be paying up to $920 for season's passes. So for most students this is a good initiative, helping them enormously to keep their costs down.
The Carleton University student who does not in fact live on campus but has a free shuttle service available to her from the University of Ottawa campus to classes at Carleton, insists she has no need to use OC Transpo. It made practical sense to her to try to recoup her $290 in additional student fees reflecting the OC Transpo pass cost, by selling it to someone else.
But these are non-transferable, and each pass is made deliberately user-specific, with the name and photograph of the individual right on the pass. Moreover, right on the pass itself is a legend informing the holder that the pass is non-transferable. That hasn't stopped some students from their determination to try to sell their individualized passes.
And it didn't stop this young woman studying criminal law, either. She made an arrangement to meet someone who had responded to her advertisement, purportedly to purchase the pass for his daughter.
She has seen the seamy side of illegal activities. She might now consider enrolling in law school.
Isn't that what the criminal class, as a matter of fact, does? Ignores laws the better to practise their covert, illegal and often very profitable enterprise called law-breaking? Is this Carleton University student studying criminology to better understand the phenomenon, and seeking to practise law-breaking herself to discover the thrills and profit inherent in it for its practitioners?
After all, public transportation facilities are meant to convey people from point A to point B and all other points in between and beyond. Public conveyance is a costly business. The vast network of infrastructure points, the convoys of trains and buses and the upkeep of stations, the hiring of public transit workers, all of that costs hugely.
Much of the cost associated with operating a functional public transportation system is municipally subsidized; that's tax money that homeowners and businesses pay for services that the entire community enjoys.
Of course transit users also have to shell out for their monthly passes, and they too are quite costly. Geared, largely, to the services provided. And some societal demographics get lucky, as ways are found to pool resources to service specific communities in a more economical manner. Senior citizens always get breaks of one kind or another. And so too do students whose disposable incomes are fairly finite.
So it was that a special arrangement was agreed upon with local universities, to launch a low-cost full-semester transit pass subsidized by the entire student body through the institution of a mandatory $290 fee added to tuition costs. An agreeable arrangement, one might imagine, but not everyone agrees.
Those students who live on campus and who don't require the use of public transit feel ill done by, being charged for a pass they are issued but don't have a need to utilize. And some of them attempt to sell their Uni-pass to earn back that $290 they had to shell out. It is illegal to do so.
The city's transit authority has problems with enterprising student entrepreneurs who even, cleverly, use first-rate copiers to produce fraudulent tickets which they sell on line. As a result, and to try to nip the practise, OC Transpo peruses sites like Craig's lists and Kijiji, where they see the advertisements students place for the sale of transit passes.
It is illegal to sell a pass that has been issued to a specific individual - or to loan it out to someone other than the legal holder. Without the U-Pass, students would be paying up to $920 for season's passes. So for most students this is a good initiative, helping them enormously to keep their costs down.
The Carleton University student who does not in fact live on campus but has a free shuttle service available to her from the University of Ottawa campus to classes at Carleton, insists she has no need to use OC Transpo. It made practical sense to her to try to recoup her $290 in additional student fees reflecting the OC Transpo pass cost, by selling it to someone else.
But these are non-transferable, and each pass is made deliberately user-specific, with the name and photograph of the individual right on the pass. Moreover, right on the pass itself is a legend informing the holder that the pass is non-transferable. That hasn't stopped some students from their determination to try to sell their individualized passes.
And it didn't stop this young woman studying criminal law, either. She made an arrangement to meet someone who had responded to her advertisement, purportedly to purchase the pass for his daughter.
"I go, I met her...I said, 'Hi, are you looking for the U-pass?' She said 'yes'. She gave me $250 in exchange for the pass. then she pulls out a badge, and then she waves over her partner who was waiting in the doorway in Sears. I was just dumbfounded by the whole situation."Doubtless, she was. Particularly when she was handed a real buzzer of a ticket, valued at $610. Now that stings. To save $290 she now owes the courts $610 for undertaking an illegal transaction. Might be a valuable lesson to this young woman. Clearly, she is engaged in pursuing an academic career for which she is unsuited.
She has seen the seamy side of illegal activities. She might now consider enrolling in law school.
Labels: Ontario, Ottawa, Social-Cultural Deviations
posted by Pieface @ 6:25 PM
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