SARAH YORO | staff writer
A number of faculty and staff members fail to pay parking tickets, but receive limited or no disciplinary action.
Parking on APU property has been an ongoing problem according to the Department of Campus Safety. Contributing to this problem are a number of faculty and staff members who park illegally and neglect to pay their fines. “Sometimes they’re cited for parking out of a stall or in the red zone. Sometimes they’re cited for letting daughters or sons use their parking permit and they’re not allowed to do that either,” Department of Campus Safety Deputy Chief Anthony Strickland said.
Whatever the case, Campus Safety has yet to enforce a consistent or clear-cut disciplinary action for faculty and staff members who continue to break these rules. According to Strickland, Campus Safety tries to fi nd other ways of disciplining faculty and staff members instead of towing their vehicles. “In general, it’s kind of a rule, but it’s not that we cannot or do not tow faculty and staff. It’s typically we don’t tow them because it’s a little different than dealing with students,” Strickland said.
According to the APU Vehicle Code (APUVC) section 6000 No Exemptions states, “All faculty, staff, students, visitors, and guests must comply with the APU Vehicle Code. No one is exempt from paying all fi nes or penalties. All ticket fi nes must be paid within the 10-day appeal period.” Section 6005 Failure to Pay Fine of the APUVC states, “Failing to pay fi nes within 10 days of the citation date will result in the following: All unpaid student fi nes will be posted to the student’s account. A mandatory $5 university fee will be added to all citations. NOTE: Faculty and staff are also responsible for all the fi nes and are not exempt from paying.” When a student receives a parking ticket and does not pay for it, the charges are billed to their account. If the student continues to break the rules, they are subject to further penalties including higher-priced citations, towing of their vehicle, or the revoking of their parking permit. Unlike students, faculty and staff members do not have school accounts, making it diffi cult to bill them directly.
“Years ago, if you worked for a department and you accumulated so many tickets, we would contact your department head,” Strickland said. “Sometimes they would pay it or fi gure out what the consequences for their employee would be.” According to Strickland, they stopped billing departments because the money would come out of the department budget and not hold the individual accountable. Currently,Campus Safety attempts to deal with the problem directly at its source. “We talk to them directly and see if we can get some cooperation,” Strickland said. “We can take it to the provost if they’re a faculty member. If they’re a staff member we can take it to their department head.” Towing faculty and staff members’ vehicles can also affect students.
“We can’t continuously tow a faculty or staff member’s car and prevent them from teaching the class because that creates a little bit of a snowball effect,” Strickland said. “It not only hurts that staff member, but it hurts the students that are waiting and paid their money for class. So, it’s a little bit different impact on our community when we tow a staff member’s car.”
Regardless, some students believe the situation can be avoided altogether if everyone follows the rules. “I can see why that can affect the students, but if [faculty and staff members] would just park legally in the fi rst place, they wouldn’t have to deal with all the repercussions,” senior business administration major Philip Brazell said. Although Campus Safety seeks to limit faculty and staff member vehicle towing, this does not mean they are exempt from towing altogether. “That doesn’t mean they won’t be towed in the future and it doesn’t mean that we won’t tow them now,” Strickland said. “We just take a little bit of a different approach and try to fi nd other ways before just towing their vehicle.”
As a university based on Christian standards, Strickland believes faculty and staff members who break the rules should think fi rst about acting in a godly manner. “For the individuals that try to blow off their tickets, it’s defi nitely a lack of leadership and responsibility to the community,” Strickland said. “As Christians, we should always be trying to do the right thing. Especially as Christians, once you decide to dedicate your life to Christ, you should definitely try to live in a way that is honoring Christ.”
Students also believe no one should be able to bend the rules. “Everyone has to follow the rules,” Brazell said. “Especially if you’re supposed to be an example to students, it’s something you should want to do.” According to Strickland, the parking problem is currently in the works of conversation and hopes to be resolved soon.
“We have been in discussion recently with different administrators on campus to fi gure out how to consistently hold faculty and staffmembers accountable, just like we hold our students accountable,” Strickland said.
