Students who have not received their official parking decal for the 2009-2010 school year are being issued tickets even though they have temporary decals visible in car windows.
During the first week of October, police service technicians issued tickets for decals that expired at the end of August and also for cars that were not registered. Last week, some students that registered their vehicles and had their temporary decals visible were issued $30 tickets. Tomiwa Oduwole, and Christian Exantus were among those students.
According to some students who were issued tickets, their temporary decals were not expired and correctly placed in their dashboards.
Oduwale, 22, a fourth-year pharmacy student from Jacksonville, received a ticket two days after she printed out her temporary decal.
“I had been having problems with iRattler for so long but was finally able to register my car and print out my temporary decal,” Oduwale said. “My temporary decal doesn’t expire until November 3rd but I was issued a ticket on October 27th stating that I didn’t have an appropriate decal. I just don’t understand.”
Assistant Chief of Police, James Lockley, said some police service technicians made errors.
“There are thousands of cars that technicians pass daily,” Lockley said. “Sometimes they have the appropriate decals and sometimes they don’t. It’s not uncommon that a technician makes a mistake every now and then and wrongly issues a ticket.”
Exantus, 21, a fourth-year criminal justice student from Ft. Lauderdale, is upset after receiving two tickets in the same week.
“I really think it’s unfair to me,” Exantus said. ” It’s bad enough that I was received a ticket the first week of October, now I was issued two tickets on Monday and Thursday of last week. I applied for my decal the last week of September and I still have not received it in the mail. My roommate applied for his a few days after me and received his within a week. I had to reinstate my temporary decal twice.”
Chief Lockley said students are not always innocent in this situation either.
“They also make errors when it comes to these decals,” Lockley said. “We have had a big issue with decals being sent to student’s home addresses instead of their local addresses. Students need to pay more attention and read carefully when registering for their decals so that their decals are mailed to the correct address.”
The issuing of the tickets also angers Bryan Spence, 21, an allied health student from Hollywood, Fla.
“I know for a fact that I put my correct local address on my registration form, so I don’t understand why it was never mailed to me,” Spence said. “After three weeks of getting away with my temporary decal, I went to parking services and found out that they had my decal. They claimed that they were still getting around to mailing them out but it shouldn’t take them that long.”
Lockley said parking services is getting better at the process of mailing out decals.
“Overall, we have been doing a whole lot better with decals,” Lockley said. “It’s a long process that can be stressful at times, but it will be over soon.”
Student services are still working on mailing out decals. Any student who has not received their official decal is encouraged to report to student services as soon as possible.