Due to a recent uprising in the amount of boots given to students’ cars around campus, students voice their opinion about parking on campus, parking violations, and parking passes.
Curtis Edwards, a senior in parks, recreation and tourism management, said that he has had five parking violations since August, and that he parks both on and off campus.
“On campus I usually park in spots near my classes and hope I don’t get ticketed. I don’t want to give away my off campus spots, but they are fairly close to class and I rarely have problems with authorities, but I know others that have in the same spots,” said Edwards. “If I don’t drive, I will ride my bike, but sometimes it’s hard to get up that extra 15 minutes earlier.”
As for the violations themselves, Edwards said he finds them ridiculous.
“I think they are pretty ridiculous, but at the same time it doesn’t dissuade me from taking my chances,” Edwards said. “I have just accepted that I’m going to get tickets if I park where I’m not supposed to, but if I can keep that cost under that of a permit in a year, in my mind it’s worth it.”
Keli Johnson, a junior in psychology, said she’s only parked on campus during summer school and that she’s never had any violations.
“[Parking on campus is] too strict because we are such a large campus,” said Johnson. “Because of all the students it’s not convenient for all of them to ride the bus or catch a ride, so they should make parking easier and more convenient.”
Johnson said she drives to Food Lion and catches the bus from there, but that it’s not the ideal situation.
“It kind of sucks because you get out of class and you still have to wait to catch the bus,” said Johnson.
As for improvements to campus parking, Johnson and Edwards both said they would like to see more available spots.
Despite the popular student belief, “for a University of our size we offer more parking opportunities,” said Christine Klein, transportation public communication specialist. “Parking opportunities are greater [on our campus] than at most universities.”
NCSU is such a large University that parking could quickly get out of hand, according to Klein
“Without rules and guidelines it would be chaos,” Klein said. “Parking rules and regulations are in place to encourage voluntary compliance.”
The several parking decks around campus are where most of the violations get written.
Melissa Watkins, parking enforcement manager, said “[the areas with the most violations are] probably going to be something like the Coliseum deck, Dan Allen deck, and the Centennial Campus decks because they are the largest parking areas with the most spaces.”
According to Watkins these are also the areas with the most car boots.
Parking enforcers have also had to change laws regarding boots because of the amount of unpaid tickets.
“If you have six tickets within six months you get booted, whether you’ve paid them or not.” Watkins said.
Ronnie Wright, assistant director for finance, said this is to force compliance.
Last year there were $527,399 dollars collected for parking violations, reported Wright. That still left $155,982 uncollected by December of 2010. The remaining 80 percent of collected violation money that doesn’t stay at NCSU, but goes elsewhere within the state.
“On an annual biases about $100,000 dollars of it goes to us. Twenty percent of the fines for collection costs, which doesn’t cover it,” said Wright.
“It’s not a money maker for us,” Klein said.
