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Could College Parking Tickets Come Back To Haunt You?

 
5 5,764 views May 10, 2010
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parking ticket - flickr user alicegop

parking ticket - flickr user alicegop

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no parking - flickr user brymo

no parking - flickr user brymo

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So responsibility slips a bit, and in the rush to get your term paper finished you forgot to pay the meter, forgot your parking pass, or wedged your Toyota Yaris or MINI Cooper into a spot you shouldn't have.

Those tickets will all go away when you're out in the real world, right?

Probably…but don't count on it. While your school isn't going to share parking tickets racked up on campus with a neighboring city, or with the state, it's a standing record of your responsibility and you're better off taking care of it. On some campuses, parking enforcement might even be so kind as to waive your first ticket.

Something called the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) might help protect you, depending on how your own state's department of education and court system decide to interpret it.

In Oklahoma, the state's two major universities, Oklahoma State University and the University of Oklahoma, won't release citation records with student names, as it claims they're educational records and protected by the law. The paper at Oklahoma State had apparently intended to distill information regarding more than 18,000 parking tickets issued on campus from August 1 through April 9. While OSU denied the request completely, Oklahoma University volunteered more numbers and statistics but no identity-specific information.

However in Maryland, or a number of other states, that might not be the case. When a student newspaper at the University of Maryland requested documents relating to a basketball player who had allegedly been issued 285 parking violations, worth a total of $8,000—and was turned down—Maryland appellate court in 1997 ruled against the school. Parking violations had nothing to do with a student's education, it was decided, and thus would be open under the Open Records Act.

In states where it is decided to be legal, the floodgates are open and it's just another piece of personal information that could potentially be available to companies that do background checks for new hires. Let it slip, and even if the letters stop it could very well come back to haunt you.

[The Daily O'Collegian, via Washington Post Campus Overload blog]





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Comments (5)

  1. By ter Posted: 5/11/2010 1:18pm PDT

    Uh - oh - new source of revenue for broke schools
     
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  2. By Java Junkie Posted: 5/11/2010 1:43pm PDT

    It is almost impossible not to get a parking ticket while in college no matter how good a person one is. However, students should pay the fines.
     
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  3. By curt Posted: 5/11/2010 2:39pm PDT

    Just goes to show, for our generations there really is no escaping your past. Whatever you type, whatever offenses you commit, you can be almost sure that someone's archiving it for future research, amusement, or bribery.
     
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  4. By Elizabeth Posted: 5/11/2010 3:26pm PDT

    Parking tickets accumulated on campus ARE shared with the state, at least in California. If they are not paid within a few months, the tickets ARE forwarded to the DMV, where they must be paid off before car registration can be renewed. In addition, schools WILL tow your car away if your registration tags are expired. Both of these scenarios happened to me.
     
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  5. By Anti-Authority Posted: 5/11/2010 3:39pm PDT

    Parking violations are EDUCATIONAL RECORDS? Give me a frickin' break. I'm all for exposing the absurd favors and benefits granted to college athletes & shaming them in public for the mostly appalling graft they get.
     
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