Ferris criminal justice sophomore Phil Marsalese believes he’s received unfair treatment from Ferris Department of Safety (DPS) regarding a slew of tickets he received last October.
Marsalese claims to have received three parking tickets for leaving his car in Lot 21 over a weekend. He parked in the correct lot, but his permit sticker had fallen off his windshield.
“I did a whole two-page paper on how I felt like it was wrong. They gave me a phone call. They said, basically, that the board rejected my appeal and that I’d have to pay it, so I ended up paying it,” Marsalese said.
He was about to receive a fourth parking ticket for unlawful display of his sticker when he returned to his car, Marsalese said.
Marsalese was but one student among many voicing concerns and airing their grievances at the Student Government Association (SGA) 2019 Student Issues Panel.
The discussion Tuesday, Feb. 5, in the University Center, was previously an annual event until 2018 when it was canceled due to scheduling conflicts.
“I wanted to bring it back,” Ferris accounting and finance sophomore and SGA President Bobby Gill said. “And I wanted the transparency aspect because I know a lot of the administrators want to get this information out to campus, but they don’t know how to do it.”
The policy on parking citations was explained by Ferris DPS Dispatch Specialist Dylan Tantalo.
“The policy that we have is every two hours, essentially, you can be recited,” Tantalo said. “If you live on campus and you park up in Lot 4, for example, you might not know for a couple of days that you’re getting tickets. Usually what the parking office does, is that they’ll excuse a ticket after the first one per day. So if you leave your car there for five days, you still may end up getting five total tickets, but if there’s seven or eight on your windshield, you’d have to come in and talk with the parking office.”
“How am I supposed to know the sticker came off?” Marsalese said. “It just fell onto the dashboard, so if you were to look in and read it, it would say I was legally parked there. What was the last straw for me was when I was paying the ticket, my car got ticketed at the police station.”
Students who experience a problem on campus are welcome to attend an SGA meeting 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays in UCB 202. The SGA can also be contacted through email or Facebook.
“If students do have problems that are going on around campus like that guy had the parking issues, that’s the perfect thing for student government to tackle. Our thing is we’re here to serve the students,” Gill said. “We don’t get enough students coming in and telling us what’s wrong.”
The panel consisted of Interim Chief Technology Officer Ralph Williams, Vice President of Administration & Finance Jerry Scoby, Dean of Student Life Joy Pufhal, Vice President of Student Affairs Jeanine Ward-Roof, Associate Vice President of Auxiliary Enterprises Gheretta Harris and Ferris State Department of Public Safety Dispatch Specialist Dylan Tantalo.