A drive around campus Sunday morning is enough to reveal a prevalent problem in Duke's parking lots: Each weekend parking gate arms need to be replaced because of vandalism or students trying to park illegally in gated lots.
Duke Parking and Transportation shells out thousands of dollars each year to replace the broken gates.
Since the beginning of the academic year, there have been more than 400 instances of broken parking gates on campus, said Cathy Reeve, director of parking and transportation.
Ninety-two of the instances happened in January alone.
Broken gates have cost Parking and Transportation about $20,000 in funds gathered from parking permits.
A total of 600 to 700 broken gates are anticipated by the end of the year, Reeve added.
Gates are generally broken by a vehicle driving directly through them or when individuals lift the gates for cars to go under, Reeve said.
One student, however, said he used a different approach.
"I ran through one on East Campus when I was drunk," said senior Mark Ewing, who broke a gate as a freshman. "It was more of a curiosity thing than anything else."
Ewing also noted that the gates were unlikely to cause harm.
"They are really flimsy," he said. "I had no bruises the next day. Nothing."
The gates are purposefully designed to break to avoid damaging the gates' motor systems, Reeve said. Each motor system costs about $3,000 to purchase and install.
"The best case scenario is that only the arm will need to be replaced rather than parts [within the motor system]," she said. "It costs about $50 per gate [to repair]."
Gate arms are broken so often that the repair staff cuts and paints its own gate arms to keep costs at a minimum, Reeve added.
Reeve said the administration could replace wooden gate arms with stronger metal ones, but doing so could cause more expensive damage to the gate mechanism if one tampers with an arm.
"Metal gates are designed so they bend, which causes more damage," Reeve said. "The gates break away for a reason. When you break a gate, you do more damage than just breaking the wooden arm."
Despite the severity of the problem, there are currently no specific plans to more aggressively seek out parking gate vandals, said Sara-Jane Raines, administrative services executive officer for the Duke University Police Department.
"It is very difficult for Campus Police to catch violators unless there is a witness," she said.
Although it has been rumored that cameras in the Blue Zone can be used to catch violators, Raines said they currently are not used for that purpose, and it does not seem likely that they will be in the near future.
"Protecting lives and people is our number one priority," she said. "Protecting property is a second priority."
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.