After a serious campaign to boot cars with oustanding parking fines, sometimes reaching the thousands of dollars, Public Safety has decided to hire an outside company to handle overdie fines, hoping to impart they actually do mean business with all those tickets students often toss to the floorboard and ignore.
Many students currently park without a permit because after a cost-benefit analysis, they decide it's cheaper to pay fines than for the permit. Others feel that nothing will come of all the tickets, until the one day that Public Safety randomly decides it's time for the boot. Granted, students are taking advantage of the system, but it's difficult to know if officers will choose to boot the car after $400 in fines or $4,000, making Public Safety part of the problem themselves. It is difficult to take such spotty enforcement seriously.
With an agency collecting fines, students' credit ratings are at risk if they do not pay, though Public Safety refuses to release the name of the outside company. AU students are entitled to full disclosure of how ticketing will be handled, and also deserve to know if any private information will be divulged to the agency.
Another question this raises is why the school needs an outside agency to do this work in the first place. ?
