Students at Mississippi State have recently been raising questions about where the money paid for campus parking tickets on campus goes. Any given day, students can see how easy it is to receive a ticket for parking in the wrong place. Many students receive tickets for various reasons, from parking in staff places in the wrong lot.
Two results occur when a student receives a ticket. One option is to go through the appeal process and try to get the infraction removed. This entails going to Lee Hall, filling out a form, and then receiving information about the result of your ticket later.
The other option for the student is to accept the penalty and pay the ticket, with the charge being deducted from their student account. Students may go to Garner Hall, where account services office are located, pay the ticket, or after a period of time passes and the student makes no attempt to pay, the money is deducted automatically. This charge is deducted much like tuition, meal plans or other similar costs are removed from student accounts.
The money then goes into a general budget. This budget is used to fund salaries, equipment, operations and maintenance. The general budget is funded by tuition, state appropriations, gifts and grants.
“There’s a long list of things that pour into the fund, but tuition is the predominant factor,” Ron Brown, associate comptroller for Mississippi State, said.
Brown handles finances and acts as a treasurer for the MSU campus, issuing statements, receipts, travel reimbursements for faculty and cashiering. Brown told The Reflector that only a small percentage of the funding for the budget comes from parking tickets. Statistics show that totals for parking fines reach $732,000, with totals for parking decals hitting $387,000.
While a substantial amount comes from parking, it is only part of the fund. Total revenue for the general budget amounts to over $238 million.
“I have always wondered what happened to the money I paid for my tickets,” Caleb Smith, a senior history education major, said. “I also think the school should be a better communicator with students about where to park. When I first came here, I had no idea what was right or wrong. Then they just slapped a ticket on me and said, ‘Sorry’.”
“What are they doing with the money? Why don’t they build a parking garage with the money? They write too many tickets anyway, so they need to do something good with the money,” Smith said.
Sara Sullivan, a freshman biological engineering major, agrees with Smith.
“Parking is so bad, and I can’t understand why they want to write so many tickets. It’s ridiculous. Why can’t everyone just park where they want, instead of having to go to places so far away? It seems like they (police) just write tickets all the time, and someone is making money from it. I would like to know where that money goes,” Sullivan said.
Brown said that traffic fines are a way the school gains revenue. “While it provides some money, we’re not charging everyone for this. Tickets are a controlled procedure. You have to have some order. We simply charge those who break the rules. I find it hard to understand how someone who breaks a rule wants to get out of it,” Brown said.
When asked about the allocation of ticket money, Brown said it is pooled into the general fund and is not secret information.
“This is a public university, with public information,” Brown said.
With some students also concerned that the money from tickets is being used for athletics, questions were raised about the funding of teams at Mississippi State.
“It is an invalid assumption to think that money from tickets is used for the football team,” Brown said.
Athletics is funded by the auxilary fund at Mississippi State, where revenues are gathered from ticket sales, and part of the student fee, which is a part of each student’s tuition and is especially set apart for athletics. Another question among students is whether or not parking ticket money goes toward police salaries.
“Indirectly, it does, but once again, it all goes into that general fund. It’s not wrong to say that it pays police officers’ salaries, but they are not totally supported by this,” Brown said.
Sullivan said she thinks the school has been secretive about the spending of the money.
“Even though no one really knows what the money goes towards, wouldn’t it be a good idea to use the money to build a parking garage to help students? I think the school should be better about letting students know how they spend our money,” Smith said. “I just hope they aren’t writing tickets for the sake of making money.