Students who have received tickets for parking violations on campus may soon have the opportunity to be relieved of paying their fines through a new pilot parking forgiveness program from LSU Student Government.
The program, which was launched out of a $2,000 allocation made last semester, uses an objective process to determine which citations are eligible for reprieve.
“When we first got in office, we really wanted to find ways that gave student fees back to the students,” said SG director of transportation Chuck Mock. “We wanted to also find ways that helped students navigate all the different parking regulations without truly being punished for having a mistake.”
SG combined the two ideas to come up with a pilot program for parking forgiveness, but this time around they’re only testing whether the program is feasible, Mock said.
As the program is only a pilot, it will be suspended until it is refunded once the $2,000 runs out.
“The appeals process that we have now is only made up of student members that are appointed by SG,” Mock said. “Students can appeal the tickets the receive is they think that they were incorrect.”
The current parking appeals process through SG, which is different from the parking forgiveness program, only takes care of those tickets given when the parking officer may have made a mistake or the parking office messed up, Mock said. This appeals process does not account for mistakes made on the student’s part.
The forgiveness program’s process uses four criteria to determine which tickets can be taken care of: The citation must have been issued on or after Oct. 1, 2016; the student must never have been convicted of a previous parking violation; the Parking Appeals Board must sustain the appeal, ruling that the student did, in fact, violate parking regulations; and the violation must be one of the following: bicycle, against flow, improper parking, improper display, other citation, overtime parking, out of zone, out of zone BC, reserved lot or reserved space.
“We don’t really know how much is going to be allotted to forgiveness over the next couple of weeks and the next couple of months,” Mock said. “I don’t want students to think that just because you appeal doesn’t mean you’re not going to have to pay it.”
Mock also notes that even if an associated ticket is forgiven, tows are not covered by the forgiveness program.
Should a student’s ticket be deemed worthy of forgiveness, an update would be added to the student’s fee bill noting that the ticket was voided and the student, therefore, does not have to pay the fine. SG will use the allotted $2,000 to cover that student’s fine for them.
“If it fits all of [the criteria], it is automatically added to this list that is sent to SG once a month and then SG just sends a ticket to the parking office,” Mock said.
