Common sense should replace ticketing

By Colin Likas

It is no secret at this point that parking at Butler University changed quite a bit over the summer.

Students, faculty and staff trying to park on campus should have a good idea of where they can and cannot park at this point.

Butler University—through its police department—is making that task more difficult than it should be with rampant ticketing.

Ticketing is not fine if the Butler administration cannot appropriately communicate with students about where they can actually park.

One example: Before the I Lot was ready to be parked in, students with permits for the lot were asked to park in front of Hinkle Fieldhouse.

I know of an individual in this situation who decided to drive into Broad Ripple on the day of Butler’s football game on Sept. 7.

When that individual tried to return to the Hinkle lot—which was not full, by any means—she was denied access without payment because all parking in the area had been turned into football parking.

She decided to park in the also sparsely-populated Residential College lot.

And she received a parking ticket around 5 a.m. because she failed to move her vehicle back to the Hinkle lot after the game—one with a 6 p.m. start time—had ended.

What is the purpose of this? If the ResCo lot was absolutely full, a person parked in it with the wrong permit would be fair game.

But in a mostly-empty lot on a Sunday morning, Butler is just attempting to grub money from its students by ticketing.

Last weekend, Lambda Chi Alpha held its annual Watermelon Bust.

As part of the event, a large tent was set up in the fraternity’s parking lot. After consulting BUPD, fraternity members believed they could park in the Clowes Memorial Hall lot as long as they weren’t there overnight.

Ticketing began around 10 p.m., so cars were moved to the Hinkle lot.

The following night, the same event took place. This time, however, cars moved to Hinkle were ticketed.

Although those tickets were eventually repealed, the attempt to ticket students—twice in one night, no less—when they are parked at Butler has asked them to be is alarming.

These are situations where cars are being parked overnight in close-to-empty lots.

So why is it necessary to ticket them?

Butler needs to sacrifice bringing in more money for common sense when it comes to parking tickets.

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