To: Rutgers Department of Transportation
Rutgers: End Exploitative DOT Practices
It's time to make the Rutgers parking system more fair and just for all.
Why is this important?
Rutgers has unfairly benefited from excessively issuing parking citations at the student's expense for too long. Rutgers rakes in $5 million annually from parking violations, which raises two questions:
1) Where is the money going?
2) Are students paying an unnecessary price?
Hundreds of students have faced the burden of excessive parking citations. The minimum cost of a ticket has increased from $10 in 2008 to $25 today. As of last year, Rutgers stopped issuing physical tickets and employed an online system to view tickets. This system allows many more tickets to be issued at a time and often, several tickets are issued to the same vehicle within the same hour. To make matters especially worse, many students don’t receive any notification that they received a ticket until months later, after hundreds of dollars worth of fines and late fees have already accumulated. These financial holds impede class registration and graduation, and many students have been forced to drop out of school as they are left with overwhelming debt they cannot afford to pay. All of this could have been avoided had they received proper notification in the first place.
Its time to make Rutgers parking system more fair and just, and end exploitative practices. We call on transportation heads to lower the cost of fines and limit the number of tickets that can be issued--and to improve the ticketing system, so that proper fine notifications are guaranteed. Rutgers already has a reputation for not caring about its students (especially commuters, who make up half the student population); it would be wise to take their concerns seriously.
1) Where is the money going?
2) Are students paying an unnecessary price?
Hundreds of students have faced the burden of excessive parking citations. The minimum cost of a ticket has increased from $10 in 2008 to $25 today. As of last year, Rutgers stopped issuing physical tickets and employed an online system to view tickets. This system allows many more tickets to be issued at a time and often, several tickets are issued to the same vehicle within the same hour. To make matters especially worse, many students don’t receive any notification that they received a ticket until months later, after hundreds of dollars worth of fines and late fees have already accumulated. These financial holds impede class registration and graduation, and many students have been forced to drop out of school as they are left with overwhelming debt they cannot afford to pay. All of this could have been avoided had they received proper notification in the first place.
Its time to make Rutgers parking system more fair and just, and end exploitative practices. We call on transportation heads to lower the cost of fines and limit the number of tickets that can be issued--and to improve the ticketing system, so that proper fine notifications are guaranteed. Rutgers already has a reputation for not caring about its students (especially commuters, who make up half the student population); it would be wise to take their concerns seriously.