I pride myself in following the rules, most of the time, so when I face the consequences of rules that I didn’t even know I broke it is extremely disturbing.
Last semester I had the quintessential NSU experience of getting a parking ticket. If you have had this experience then you know how annoying it can be, and if you have not, then do not fret they will get you eventually.
Starting from the beginning, while heading to my car last semester I saw a piece of paper sitting on my windshield. At first, I thought it was just another one of those flyers informing me of the next big south Florida banger or some bar that just opened. To my surprise it was a notice printed off center on a white piece of printer paper, informing me that I had been issued a ticket. Based on how the ticket looked and the fact that I thought that I did nothing wrong, I honestly thought it was simply a prank.
Nevertheless, I called the number listed on the paper twice just to make sure I did not actually get a ticket. Both times I received no answer back and being a mid-weekday, I thought if it were a legitimate office someone would have answered. I went on with my business largely ignoring the events until the following afternoon.
At this point I noticed another sheet of printer paper informing me I had received yet another ticket. It was only after going on the NSU’s parking portal that I had realized that it was not a prank. The tickets were $40 each, and I still had no clue why they were issued to me. Neither of the so-called tickets had a reason. I was parked in the residential lot and my car was registered, so I was at a loss. It was only after numerous attempts to reach out to parking services that I found out it was because I did not “purchase” a permit for the winter semester.
While my car was registered, I still had to go through another process on the portal to “purchase” the permit even though I already had the permit sticker on the car. Parking services did email me once informing me that I needed to register for a permit for the winter semester as well, halfway through winter break, during which, similarly to most students, was a time where I was not actively checking my email.
After some debating with parking services, I was able to get them to drop one of the two tickets but I was still responsible for paying the first.
I have had peers get parking tickets for parking in unmarked lots, tickets for parking in empty commuter lots so they do not have to walk in the heat to a far class, among other seemingly pointless tickets.
To me it just feels like NSU is trying to squeeze every bit of money out of their students through parking on campus. I am hoping that maybe this year parking services can give students a break and stop issuing tickets for irrelevant actions. All of this is clearly not for safety reasons, as NSU is an open campus and Public Safety has made a clear stance that they are unable to prevent non NSU individuals from coming onto campus, so why wring our pockets by issuing tickets?
