By Dan Caine
Parking is one of the biggest issues impacting almost every student on campus. Ticketing has changed for the 2023-2024 school year with little to no warning or explanation. Last year, ticket enforcement stopped after 4:30 and parking wasn’t enforced on weekends as a courtesy to guests. The signs located at each lot confirmed this, however, they are now covered by stickers stating, “Parking will be enforced 24/7.”
According to the Kutztown website as of the 2023-2024 semester, “All vehicles parked on campus between 7:00 AM and 4:30 PM must be registered with KU Business Services and display a valid parking decal. (EXCEPTIONS: B1, C1-5 and F3 lots are enforced 24/7/365. A1 meters are enforced until 7:00 PM.)”
According to the Kutztown website as of the 2022-2023 semester, courtesy of the wayback machine, “All vehicles parked on campus between 7:00 AM and 4:30 PM must be registered with Transportation Services and display a valid parking decal. (EXCEPTIONS: B1 and F3 lots are enforced 24/7/365. A1 meters are enforced until 7:00 PM.)”
While some of the parking choices made by students, staff, and guests do sometimes break the parking rules, that speaks to the lack of parking available for them. There were fewer tickets given when parking rules allowed parking after 4:30, and more after the 24/7 change.
According to data shared by Public Safety, they average 68-80 tickets daily, 476-560 weekly, and about 7,140-8,400 a semester. These numbers do not quite match the numbers provided by the University Traffic Bureau, shown below.
The University Traffic Bureau’s statistics state that they received 1,601 appeals from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023, and 1,273 since July 1, 2023. This results in an average of 133.4 appeals per month for 2022-23 years and 141.4 for 2023-24. The gap will only widen with four more months this year.
The Traffic Bureau also provided the below graphic highlighting the rates of appeals since 2019. While not shown below, there have been 355 appeals made since the start of the Spring 2024 semester through the end of March with varying degrees of success. 168 of the appeals were denied, 25 were granted, 1 was canceled, 14 had their fees reduced, and 147 were granted one-time forgiveness. Interestingly, the one-time forgiveness is not mentioned on the website and is not common knowledge for most students.
This has led to a general increase of students discussing being ticketed for driving to visit friends after class, as well as ticketing for guests and other parking issues. Persephone Werly, a second-year student at Kutztown, had this to say: “I got an email that I had a ticket, and when I went to check I saw two. One was from yesterday and one was from today, same violation. They didn’t tell me yesterday, and wouldn’t let me appeal it even with proof I didn’t know.”
When asked about this, Public Safety had this blanket statement: “When the student receives the citation, the next day they will receive an email. If they receive a citation on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, they will receive the email Monday morning. If they do not receive an email it may be due to a system error, but this has never occurred.”
Tickets can also be given every four hours, meaning a student could accrue 1-18 tickets for the same violation without being notified if the tickets started Friday and continued through Sunday. Since students are unable to be notified about tickets over the weekends, this question is raised: if the ticketing system still works on the weekends, why doesn’t the notification system?
In the case of a vehicle breakdown, the Kutztown website recommends that students, “Notify Public Safety IMMEDIATELY and obtain a “DISABLED VEHICLE” placard from the Communications Center to place on the vehicle. This service is available 24/7.” A KU student, who wishes to remain anonymous, had this to say regarding that policy: “My roommate’s car broke down and we tried calling Public Safety to ask for help. They told us they wouldn’t and would tow the car if we didn’t move it. We pushed it across campus, just the three of us. They told us that wasn’t a thing, the policy.”
It seems that ticketing is unavoidable for most students, leading them to pursue the aforementioned appeal. The Associate Director of KU Business Services, Anne K Reel “reviews appeals each day and determines the outcome of each. An electronic record is kept and the appellant is notified of the outcome via email,” according to the Kutztown University Traffic Bureau. This will possibly be changed, however, and a more student-friendly system will be implemented.
“We are piloting a change to the process where the University Traffic Bureau, a part of the university governance structure, would be disbanded. Instead, an administrator would be responsible for responding to all appeals. A secondary level of appeal would be possible with the details of that level still being ironed out. This information was discussed at the Administrative Council meeting (including the president’s cabinet, union representatives, and the president of the SGB with support offered.),” (Kutztown University Traffic Bureau). No timeline has been shared.
Any further questions or issues regarding ticketing should be directed to Public Safety, and any questions regarding tickets should be directed to the University Traffic Bureau, a separate department.
