Students voice parking services stories, frustration

Kyle Amstutz, senior aeronautics major

Amstutz was very open about how many parking tickets he’s earned during his five years at Kent State – he’s gotten around ten tickets in total, all due to parking in the wrong lot.

He said he thinks parking services generally checks different parking lots around every half hour or hour.

“They don’t really give a lot of leniency on it,” Amstutz said. “However, your first parking ticket per semester you don’t have to pay. It’s every second ticket and beyond that they require payment for.”

Amstutz said parking services checks parking passes through a person’s windshield and if a person’s parking pass doesn’t match the lot they’re in, parking services gives them a ticket.

“I think what they should do is always write up a warning instead of immediately writing out a ticket, especially since the first one is a freebie anyways,” he said. “They can charge $15-20 per ticket or more and especially students may not have that money freely on hand. They might be running on a tight budget. A warning for everyone would be nicer.”

Amstutz said if someone’s in a rush, walking all the way across campus from your designated parking lot isn’t very efficient, and it can be stressful if someone’s going to be late for classes.

“Also, parking passes are insanely expensive,” he said. “I think for an all-around commuter pass, where you can park in all of the commuter lots, it’s around $215. If they lowered the prices for some of the passes, it could help prevent a lot of students from getting tickets.”

Commuter permits for the R lots range from $116 per semester to $232 for a full year and for the C lots range from $108 per semester to $216 for a full year. Allerton Sports Complex, Summit East, morning, evening and disability passes are able to be purchased as commuter passes also.

Residence Hall permits for S lots and disability passes range from $116 to $232 for a full year. Dix Stadium passes are $80 per semester. There are also permit options for motorcycles and students who don’t travel to campus frequently.

Gavin Leek, senior mechatronics engineering tech major

Leek averages around two or three parking tickets every semester. He’s gotten over ten total by the end of his collegiate career. 

He said he has two cars and sometimes forgets to move his pass. Since both cars’ license plates are registered, he generally gets these tickets appealed. 

“I’ve gotten most of them forgiven though,” he said. “The thing I struggle with is if you check that my license plate is registered and I don’t have my pass shown, I shouldn’t get a ticket because you can check my license plate.”

Parking services offers an appeal option that allows drivers to file an appeal within 7 days of receiving a ticket. From there, it can take up to 21 days for a decision on whether the ticket will be voided. Parking services also offers to void one ticket per license plate to employees and students.

One morning, Leek said he parked his car for approximately five minutes without his pass, and he came back to his car to find a ticket. He said he only had to run into a building and grab something quick.

“There’s no way to cheat the system either,” he said. “One time I had forgotten my pass and I left a ticket out on my windshield that I had gotten a couple days prior, so they knew I had already gotten one. I came out to my car to find another ticket placed next to the one I had already gotten. I think that’s the funniest story.”

Leek said parking passes should be cheaper.

“I wouldn’t care about paying for a ticket here and there if I only have to pay $100 for a whole year of parking,” he said. “But we pay a lot of money already to park up here, so the added tickets on top of it is crazy.”

Mitchell Porter, sophomore integrated social studies major

Porter shared he’s only received a few parking tickets and only had to pay for one.

“Most of the time I’ve gotten ticketed because I suffer from migraines,” he said. “Plus as a freshman, I can only park at Dix stadium and I’m only allowed to be on campus during the weekends. Unfortunately, I’m also plagued by weekend migraines, so I’ll get a migraine on a Sunday night, and I won’t be able to drive my car back  – it’s stuck in the Bowman lot. I can’t move it overnight, and I don’t wake up in time to move it before parking services, so I get ticketed.”

Porter said the only ticket he had to pay for was the day he had a multi-day migraine. He said he had to pay it because a person can’t use the same excuse more than once for parking services.

“I think for repeat offenders it’s helpful for parking services to ticket them,” he said. “I have a friend who was in the hospital for a few days, and his car was stuck in a parking lot, and it caused it to accumulate a large number of parking tickets, which eventually got his car towed. In situations like that they should definitely be forgiven. However, for people that are repeat offenders or just ignorant of where they’re supposed to park, I think they should get ticketed.”

Porter said parking services is a good system for campus to keep certain people “in line” and aware of where they can and can’t park. 

The amount of parking spots on campus and the accessibility of them is also an issue for students, Porter said.

“I know a lot of people that work overnight, and they don’t get home till two or three in the morning when there’s no parking spots left in residence hall areas, so that forces them to park in a spot they aren’t supposed to,” he said. “Although I think the prices of passes are an issue, I also think the accessibility of parking spots is an issue too.”

Wyatt Collier, sophomore exploratory major

Collier said that he lost track of how many parking tickets he got after his third one.

Right now, he only has a pass for Dix Stadium, which he said is out of the way and super inconvenient. It takes him a lot of time to drop off his car, get on the bus, and even go somewhere as close as Walmart.

“It would definitely be beneficial to have more leniency because I’ve literally parked my car and walked into a building for five minutes just to have a ticket on my car when I came out,” he said. “It’s very frustrating being a student that already has to drive all the way to Dix stadium, pay for a parking pass, and then also get hammered down with tickets as well when you can’t make it on time.”

Collier said it would be a good idea if the university implemented a system where people who have a parking pass for somewhere like the stadium could receive a week of free passes to park on campus for times when they can’t always make it to their car or back to the stadium.

“That would be phenomenal,” he said. “I really wish there was more leniency with the way they handled some situations like that.”

Molly Hoffer is a reporter. Contact her at [email protected].