Different examples of parking tickets given out around campus, including electric cars given tickets while charging, and a women who found a ticket on her car after parking behind the gym. Photo by Mike McClellan/The Daily Campus
Recently it came to light that University of Connecticut Parking Services issued more than $966,000 worth of parking tickets and fines during 2018. This is about 40,000 individual tickets.
These numbers are absurdly high. Although 20% of these parking tickets were appealed — and a little more than half of these appeals were successful — UConn Parking Services still made an enormous sum of money off students who did not or were unable to park legally.
Whether you have a car on campus or not, you’ve probably heard horror stories about parking at UConn — some people have trouble finding spaces and therefore have to park extremely far or they park illegally.
Whatever the circumstances, parking at UConn has always been subpar. Especially now, with parking lot closures due to the new science building and the development of the utility supply plant, there are fewer spots for students. Unfortunately, UConn Parking Services is not cutting students a break.
On Oct. 4, UConn Parking and Transportation Services held a transportation forum in order to disclose more information about parking. During this forum, representatives from the Parking and Transportation Services said that in order to account for the parking lot closures, Lot K opened up with even more spots. Another change this semester is that bus lines were adjusted in order to help students get to the farther parking lots.
This, however, is not enough. The reason why there are so many parking tickets is because there is a problem with how the parking system currently works. Otherwise, students would not be forced to park illegally so often that UConn Parking Services can issue nearly one million dollars worth of parking tickets in the span of one year.
UConn should change the parking system, whether that is by creating more parking lots, giving students more spaces to park in or something else altogether. Students should not be forced to pay that much money for parking tickets due to a problem that the university needs to fix.
