Many people who go to Butler University can relate to the anger of walking up to your car and seeing a little, green envelope tucked under your windshield wiper.

After opening the green envelope you see you have been charged $25 for parking in an area where you do not have a permit for. I understand that I will take the blame and pay the $25.

Wait...there are two tickets here: $50 for having a non-registration or non-current year decal.

If it has not been made clear this recently happen to me and I did my best to fight it and what I concluded is that parking is a scam.

With this being said I have the utmost respect for The Butler University Police Department, but let’s be honest there can be room for improvement in everything.

After the above story happen I got in my car to further examine the tickets. I have settled with the $25 ticket and decided to pay that, but my real problem is that since I park at my sorority house in our sorority parking lot my car does not need to be registered with the university considering that parking lot is not a permit lot.

At this point I am enraged, I don’t have $75 to just throw around. Don’t I pay enough to attend this school?! Naturally, I decide to go to BUPD immediately so someone can explain this to me and clearly right the wrong promptly. Well I was wrong.

I marched in the police station and asked to talk to someone about the tickets. Turns out the officer who wrote them is not in at the moment. I was pointed towards a clipboard to fill out an appeal form. I would hear back in 10 business days maximum.

In two days I was pleased to find that my appeal had been reviewed and I received an email from an officer of the department. My appeal was denied and here was the explanation why:

Any registered student, faculty member, staff member of an affiliated group with office space on campus, parking a motorized vehicle on campus or authorized city street must register the vehicle with the Department of Public Safety office of Parking Services. Registration and parking regulations are based on a legal commitment with the City of Indianapolis and the Butler-Tarkington Neighborhood Association. Additional authority to regulate parking on campus is in compliance with Indiana Code 21-17-5-7. The University provides parking in designated locations on Campus.

The rule completely makes sense to me and if I used university parking I would register my vehicle. Here is my problem though I received a ticket for parking in a lot that I did not have a permit for (the $25 ticket), but since I do not use university parking it is not required that I register my vehicle so how can I be punished for not doing something that I may not required to do?

The refute to that may be then you should not have parked in a permit lot. My refute to that is: then that is why I got the $25 ticket so basically I am being punished twice.

I decided to further research parking on campus, because just because my appeal was denied I wasn’t done yet. My next step was to do a full investigation of the permits offered.

None of these apply to my situation, I do not use any of these lots.

Then I decided to call parking services, where I then explained that I park in the lot behind my sorority house. I was told by parking service that no it is not required for me to register my vehicle with the university. So the problem still stands, how can I get ticketed for something that is not required of me?

After I emailed my research back to the officer I was told that if I decided to register my vehicle my appeal would be revisited, but another problem arose what permit applies to me?

Naturally, I asked.

I was told since I live in a sorority the pass that I would purchase would be the “G” pass for Greek students.

Problem: I do not use G parking...ever. Maybe it was not made clear that I PARK IN MY SORORITY LOT. So once again that permit does not actually apply to me? Not to mention it costs $225.

Being that I could not win, my decision was to pay the $75 worth of tickets and refuse the G parking pass.

Sadly, when I went to pay my tickets I had the exact same round about conversation with the person at the desk. She told me if I get a permit I probably wouldn’t have to pay the $50 ticket, I asked which one applies to me, she told me G, I explained why it did not apply to me, and she told me she did not know I should talk to BUPD.

Not one single person could supply a good solution for the problem.

I have one.

Create a $20 pass that means your vehicle is registered with the university, but not for permit lot parking that way students can park at the HRC and avoid a $50 ticket.

(and avoid frost bite when we have to walk there in the winter).

Problem solved.

I want to see our police station handle more important situations. The night I received my tickets I also received a Dawg Alert about an armed robbery on campus in which the suspect was not caught. It bothers me that instead of the whole police force out looking for someone possibly armed I was being written a ticket.

I drive places because I do not always feel safe walking and many students are concerned with that. Read Anne Leighty’s story on that: http://theodysseyonline.com/butler/butler-tarkingt...

Sure there is dawg ride but when I tried to catch one of those I was told they could not do random pick ups, and I had to request a ride from an app I had never even heard of. I also know that BUPD will escort me whenever I need, but I want the freedom to be safe walking and I want to be able to drive my car available to me when I want to.

Students are already not pleased with how the situation of the officer with a DUI was handled. Read Will Vogel’s story on that: http://theodysseyonline.com/butler/students-view-o...

I respect what BUPD does for us, but I want to feel like they help us and are not against us. Parking should be the least of my daily worries and it should be the least of theirs.