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Q-and-A on parking tickets

Many students, faculty and staff know the disappointment of walking up to their car on campus and seeing a Bradley parking ticket stuck under a windshield wiper. Violators have the option of paying the ticket with fines ranging from $15 to $200, or writing an appeal.

The Scout interviewed the anonymous upperclassman student in charge of hearing the parking ticket appeals to see what it’s really like working as a “Hilltop meter maid.”

 

How did you get this position?

You get nominated to be the chair of the Student University Arbitration Board by the Student Senate president. The chair handles parking ticket appeals, so I’ve been doing this since December.

 

Why do you like to stay anonymous in your position?

Some people would probably be angry. It would be like, “Oh, I know you, and you didn’t appeal my ticket.”

 

How many appeals do you see?

I go in and look at the appeals every Thursday, and there will be anywhere between two and 15 a week. Half of the appeals come from students and half from faculty.

 

How many ticket appeals do you deny?

I would say I deny around 80 percent of them.

 

What are the most common ticket appeals?

Most of the appeals are because the person parks in the wrong spot, and they’ll say, “Oh, we were only parked there for two minutes,” or something like that. On the front of the appeals sheet, it has all of the things you can’t appeal a ticket for, and probably 95 percent of the appeals are from that list.

 

What information do you look at when considering an appeal?

Central communications coordinator Jayne Dant gets all of the appeals and puts them together, and she has a really long process of how many previous citations you have, if you’ve ever appealed a ticket before [or] if you have a parking permit. She puts a whole thing together and makes my job really easy. And they monitor campus and parking lots with cameras, so if you’re like, “I was only in the 15 minute parking spot for 12 minutes,” they have the camera systems in there, and they monitor them, so they can actually see how long you were there.

 

What are some cases where you would approve an appeal?

There’ll be some cases where people will be like, “My car broke down, and I had five minutes to get to campus,” or, “My grandpa was in the hospital, and I’ve been flustered,” and I usually give them a warning to be sympathetic toward people.

 

Can your decision be overturned?

No, I have final say. I try to do it as fairly as I see possible, but if anyone doesn’t agree with my decision, I’m the final say in the matter.

 

Do you see people who are angry with appeal decisions?

Yes, Jayne has had people call in and yell at her. She’s told me stories of faculty or students who have yelled at her and gotten really upset with her because their appeal has been denied or because they got a ticket in the first place. But she tries to work with students. Right now there’s a student who has eight citations, and four of them are for the same thing, so she told them, “If you go and buy a parking pass, I’ll only make you pay for one.” But some people keep doing the same thing over and over again, and there’s only so much we can do.

 

Why are people so often ticketed?

I think they don’t know about the rules. I’ve pulled through a parking spot before and got a ticket and was confused after. But when you buy a parking pass, they do give you the rules and lay them out, but I understand that it’s kind of like iTunes. You’re not going to sit there and read all of the terms and conditions of it when you purchase it.

 

What’s the most interesting thing that’s happened on the job?

There was one appeal where the student said they lost their ID and couldn’t get into the parking deck, but Jayne checked the last time they swiped the ID, and she saw the student had used it three minutes before. As much as people think they can get away with lying, Jayne really does do a good job and checks everything.

 

Quick Facts

  • University parking regulations are enforced from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday in all campus lots and parking decks
  • Regulation violators receive tickets ranging from $15 to $200, depending on the violation
  • Tickets have brought in $25,000 to $35,000 annually on average over the past five years
  • The money from fines is used to support parking operations, parking lots, facilities and university services
  • There has been a decrease in the number of tickets handed out over the past six semesters as a result of freshman students now being allowed to purchase a parking permit and enrollment modestly declining.

Information from Gloria Arrington, supervisor of general services for Facilities Management

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