Students are apparently responsible for parking citations made by roommates and family members they share their home with — a lesson learned the hard way by UNM student Mark Davis, who was threatened with disenrollment for outstanding tickets.
Davis and his family had fallen victim to a UNM Parking policy that states students must take the hit and be held responsible for multiple tickets that they themselves did not receive.
In circumstances where a family member racks up citations and that family member cannot be contacted, students will be responsible for those citations, as Parking and Transportation Services cannot associate a ticket with someone who is not present to take responsibility, PATS Director Barbara Morck said.
Davis, a sophomore business major, received an email on Aug. 31 from the Bursar’s Office informing him of outstanding fines on his account.
Upon going to the Bursar’s Office, Davis was informed he owed a balance from parking tickets for a vehicle that he did not drive, and if the tickets were not paid he would be disenrolled within 24 hours.
Tim Davis, his father, said the vehicle was owned and driven by Davis’ mother.
Tim Davis said his wife had, in fact, already paid off the tickets, and that she has the check receipts to prove it. She was, therefore, shocked to be called on Sept. 1 and told their son could be disenrolled for not paying them.
“You can’t believe how astonished I was when my kid told me this,” Tim Davis said.
Mark Davis said he had to run around campus between PATS and the Bursar’s Office to try to pay the tickets, even obtaining his father’s credit card information over the phone as his parents were out of town.
Upon returning to the Bursar’s Office, Mark Davis was told he could not pay by credit card, due to new policies.
“The part that infuriated me was that they wouldn’t take my credit card number,” Tim Davis said.
Mark Davis said nobody was particularly helpful throughout the ordeal.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
“They said, ‘We know you’re having trouble but you have to get us the money,’” Mark Davis said. “I wish they would have told me about not being able to take the credit card when I went. Transportation just said, ‘They are your parents, so they’re your tickets.’”
Tim Davis said his son was worried about what disenrollment would do to the scholarship and grants he relies on to attend UNM.
Although he was in Ruidoso on business, and his wife was also out of town, Tim Davis said that he had to cut his trip short to assist his son.
“I have to wonder — how many students has this happened to?” he said.
Not a unique situation
Morck said that situations like this, where parents or siblings receive citations that end up affecting students, are not uncommon.
The policy that allows PATS to connect vehicles associated with students’ names and addresses to those students can be found under UNM Parking regulations, she said.
When a vehicle with about five to six citations cannot be associated or connected with someone on campus, it prompts a search first at the DMV, assuming it has a New Mexico license plate, Morck said. If it is not a New Mexico plate, there isn’t much the department can do.
“So if there is only one student with the last name and that address, then the vehicle gets assigned to them,” she said.
Morck said if a student is not driving the vehicle, they should come into the office and ask why the vehicle is associated with their account. If it is a parent’s or family member’s vehicle, the responsible party must come in and take responsibility for the citations.
Morck said, from there, her department disassociates the vehicle from a student’s account.
Bursar Marianne Presser said that students can be disenrolled if they owe more than $200 from a prior semester, including old parking tickets. This information can be found in the Financial Responsibility Agreement each student must agree to any time they initially register or change their registration.
“The agreement states that all prior semester balances must be paid in full. The $200 gives some wiggle room to the benefit of the student,” Presser said.
The deadline to pay outstanding fines to avoid being disenrolled this semester was Sept. 2, by 5 p.m.
Presser said students who have parking tickets on their Bursar’s account will receive billing statements with these charges indicated, and if a student calls the Bursar’s Office to dispute these charges, they are told to contact PATS.
It is then up to PATS to determine if a ticket is invalid or issued in error, she said, and if they decide it was invalid, they will remove the charge from the student’s account.
The Bursar’s Office sends several emails out prior to disenrollment, encouraging students to contact her office as well as the PATS office in case of disputes, Presser said.
“We work with students who have special circumstances, but only to their benefit,” she said.
‘It is sad’
Morck said that when a student has 10 or more citations in an academic year, PATS will send them weekly emails requesting they pay the fines.
She said, after that, an email goes out saying that a hold has been put on the their account.
Morck said her department started doing this two or three years ago, due to an incredible amount of students who racked up citations. But because those citations transferred to the Bursar’s Office, they weren’t necessarily coming up on PATS’ radar.
Morck has seen students rack up to as much as $1,300 in parking tickets, she said.
Morck said that PATS has been forced to deal with these situations on a case-by-case basis, implying that people have a tendency to lie in order to get out of tickets.
“Students, as well as faculty and staff, are very creative sometimes with the scenarios that they come up with, why things should or shouldn’t be done differently. I hate to say it but it’s true,” she said.
If problems arise, Morck said students should come in and talk to PATS, so they can find out how to solve it.
But for the Davis family, communicating with PATS has only caused more frustration.
“I find it disheartening that UNM’s complete lack of customer service has been compounded by this use of threats to collect monies,” Tim Davis said. “It is sad.”
Nichole Harwood is a freelance news reporter at the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Nolidoli1.
