Symantha Wilkins received one of the 908 parking tickets issued between Jan. 1 and Jan. 18.

The Brimley junior said she had parked along the north side of Washington Street Apartments and was found in violation around 7 p.m. the first day of classes.

As it was her first on-campus ticket, Wilkins decided pick up an appeal form Tuesday afternoon. She said she wasn’t aware that Central Michigan University was one of only two public universities in the state to require violating drivers to pay their ticket before an appeal can be filed.

“I think it’s definitely unfair that I still have to pay and they decide once they already have my money,” she said. “I knew that at (other universities) that the first ticket you get is voided, whereas here it’s $25 for your first ticket.”

Chief of Police Stan Dinius understands the “extenuating circumstances” that qualify for the granting of an appeal, but said the majority of people address their tickets right away.

“We’re not trying to gain any money off of it,” he said. “They wrote 45,000 (tickets) the year I started (at CMU). The year after I started, I think it was about 35,000. Now we’re averaging 30,000 tickets a year.”

“I think our system has enabled us to help students not get into a big money bind that they’ve gotten into in the past,” he said.

Since the start of 2009, 41 appeals have been filed, 23 of them were accepted, 11 were denied and 7 remain open.

Dinius said the number of permits issued has decreased by 613 since Dec. 31, 2007.

“Total student permits are down by 539. There’s even some decrease in the faculty and staff (category), though we haven’t had a significant decrease in faculty and staff employees,” he said. “The permitting shows we (haven’t) got 613 out there, which means it’s easier to find a parking place on campus.”

Sarah Fedewa, a Clare senior, has only received one ticket in her time at CMU. However, while undergoing advising, she said she was issued a ticket for parking in the lot adjacent to Ronan Hall.

“I feel like in buildings where they do a lot of advising, they should have a place to park that’s not ten miles away,” she said. “It was just inconvenient.”

As the number of tickets hasn’t generally gone up, Dinius said there are fewer violations. Now in his seventh year as police chief, he said that around 600 parking spaces have been added since he began.

He’s had experience with two types of appeals systems and managing paid violations. Having worked in CMU Combined Services before for 18 years, Dinius spent time as the police chief at Ferris State University.

Before he returned to CMU, FSU’s appeal policy was the same as all the other 13 public universities. Now that he’s back, the two schools share this similarity.

“We’re dealing with a manageable number of appeals and we do deal with appeals fairly quickly,” he said. “We usually can tell the person within a day or two whether their appeal has been accepted or not.”

university@cm-life.com

E-mail the author: Jackie Smith