Obscene amount of parking tickets exposes UVM’s misuse of power

UVM has a troubling way of raising funds.

No I am not talking about its high tuition rates, the cost of living in the dorms, the cost of the meal plan, the price of non-unlimited foods on-campus or the fees residents pay for “damages” or “noise violations.”

I am referring to the University’s plethora of parking violations, and the petty tickets that are issued for leaving one’s car on-campus.

Anyone who has bought a parking pass knows they cost a fair amount, but this does not end there, UVM has found ways to ensure they can extort as much money from students as possible.

The number of tickets being issued would be reasonable if the places for parking were actually coherently labeled.

Take, for instance, the lot behind Wing Davis Wilkes complex, which is next to the Redstone Apartments lot, which are both unlabeled as to which they belong.

Besides this confusion, many students do not use their cars on a regular basis, so the possibility that they will gather a large sum of tickets, or even a towing, without their knowledge is all the more likely.

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This is also very troubling: UVM seems all the more willing to tell you when your tuition is not fully paid, when you have damage fees or alcohol violations, but it never tells you that you are getting ticketed.

It seems UVM is more interested in extracting as much money as possible from those who do not know they have a parking violation because of the way the system is set up.

The way that UVM has conducted itself in this matter is frankly deplorable. Students have received threats of preventing registration for classes if they are not paid in time.

This is done through billing your student account with the amount of the ticket, which prevents registration if not paid in full.

This is a method of strong-arming people into paying parking tickets, and reflects UVM’s inability to actually levy these kinds of tickets legitimately.

In this sense the University is attempting to be as tyrannical as possible with the frankly little amount of power it actually has, seeing as without the ability to to charge this to your account, the only course of action they have is to tow the vehicle, which can only be done if they know where it is.

If you try to get the tickets dismissed, the process is long and elaborate. In the end, however, it is worth it, because the costs of these tickets can quite expensive.

The people who work in the Parking Services Office are genuinely nice and try to help, but this does not make up for the University’s overall demean- or when it comes to its parking practices.

This extortion will not end anytime in the near future, because the payoff UVM receives from this practice cannot be minimal due to the abundance of charges present in UVM life.

However, for any of you who get ticketed the most I can recommend for you is to do all you can to contest these tickets. Contest them for as long as you can in order to pay as little as you can.

In the meantime, it would at least be nice for the parking lots to be labeled in a manner that demonstrates the financial severity of parking incorrectly, whether it be by investing in neon sign that explains the full extent of the policy, or just making their signage clearer.

I also suggest you recall UVM’s behavior in this matter when they request you donate as an alumni.