Some people call them ticket Nazis; others yell and scream at them; still others simply plead ignorance and apologize profusely to them. They are four men who write parking tickets at Mississippi State University.
Their job has made them the bad guys on campus to many students, but an understanding of the way the system operates could help alleviate some of the tension.
Despite the fact that most students hate him, parking services officer Eric Swartz said taking the job was just one step on the way to becoming a police officer.
“I originally applied for a police officer position,” Swartz said. “It was a way to get my foot in the door.”
MSU Police Chief Tom Johnson said that while the parking services officers are part of his department, he has worked to establish some separation between ticket writers and police officers.
“I’ve tried to segregate the police from parking,” Johnson said. “It’s a necessary but not appreciated job.”
Mississippi State actually has a pretty high ratio of parking spaces to people. With just over 20,000 people looking for spaces and over 13,000 available, MSU’s ratio of parking spaces to people is about 65 percent.
“We don’t have a parking problem,” Johnson said. “We have a convenient parking problem, but not everyone can park right in the middle of campus.”
Johnson said that if people simply do what they are supposed to do by registering their vehicle and parking in their designated parking areas, they will be fine. However, the number of tickets issued reveals that people violate parking rules every day.
According to Swartz, each parking services officer gave out nearly 100 tickets per day at the beginning of the school year.
“We write over 20,000 tickets a year,” Johnson said. “Several thousand are voided for various reasons.”
Once someone receives a ticket, they have two options. They can go through the appeals process, or they can pay the ticket.
Carolyn Henry, the student who is in charge of traffic appeals, said that about half of the tickets appealed are overturned.
To appeal a ticket, students must go to the dean of students’ office in Lee Hall, fill out a form and wait for the verdict. If the traffic court decides to void the ticket, the appeal process if free, but if the court denies the appeal, there is a $5 charge.
Henry appoints two courts composed of about 10 students who try the cases. Members of the court must have at at least a 2.0 GPA and no outstanding parking tickets. Other than that, there are no requirements. Each court elects a chairman and meets once a week to hear cases.
“All they do is read the appeal forms and make a decision,” Henry said.
After a ticket appeal is denied, it can be appealed once more. Only about 20 appeals are brought back up throughout the semester. The second time, the student or staff member pleads their case in person before Henry and the two chairmen of the courts.
Henry said it helps if people who appeal draw diagrams or take pictures.
“Some of them make a really good case,” Henry said. “Since it’s only on paper, sometimes I don’t think it’s fair, but at least people have somewhere to go.”
Henry suggested contacting the police department before appealing the ticket.
“If there was a mistake on the ticket, sometimes it’s easier to call the police and have them take care of it,” Henry said.
If students or staff choose not to pursue an appeal, they can simply pay the ticket. Once a ticket is issued, it is entered into accounts receivable, and it is paid like any other university fee.
Daniel Bryant, the chief financial officer of MSU, expects the university to collect $500,000 from traffic fines this year.
“I try to be conservative in budgeting money we expect to come in from traffic tickets,” Bryant said. “If we no longer received that money, our budget would be out half a million dollars.”
For a university that budgets hundreds of millions of dollars a year, $500,000 is less than 1 percent of the total revenue.
Bryant said that fees collected from parking fines have been part of the budget since the university began selling decals for 50 cents at least 30 years ago.
Last year, nearly $397,000 came from the sale of decals, and traffic fines brought in just over $641,000. That money accounts for over $1 million of the university’s budget.
The money collected from traffic fines and decal sales goes into the university’s general fund, a pool of money that funds a wide variety of university functions.
Bryant said that that money does not cover the university’s expenditures related to parking and traffic. The costs of police personnel, upkeep of roads and parking lots and the new bicycle path amounted to about $3.5 million in fiscal year 2002.
Both Bryant and Johnson said the solution to the parking problem is to take advantage of the university’s shuttle system.
A complete list of university traffic and parking rules can be found on the Web at http://www.msstate.edu/dept/police/policy/traffic.htm.