Students and employees on Michigan States’ campus have been abused by the campus’s parking policies and parking police through their unfair ticketing aimed to take our money. The campus won’t even allow employees to park at their work facility for free. 

For being such a large campus with so many places to park, there is no free parking on Michigan State’s campus. As a very large campus, with incoming classes bigger than ever, the university should be well suited to supply parking for students when necessary. With a revenue exceeding 5.5 billion dollars last year, there is no reason the university needs to hand out so many tickets when their large parking lots are almost always open with room to park. Theres no bigger waste of space than an empty lot you can’t park in. The parking police alone make nearly a million dollars from 70,000+ tickets given out each year. With a population of ~51,000 students and ~20,500 employees it is inevitable that you will receive a ticket throughout the year, if not multiple. The university only provides free parking on weekends, which helps nobody on campus, or requires you to pay hundreds of dollars for a parking pass that most college kids can barely afford. The amount of money that the school already takes from students is outrageous, and the cost of parking passes and tickets is just another scheme to siphon money from vulnerable students who need to park there for class or work. We need more free parking, and less parking police! If we cut costs of parking police employment and parking police vehicles, the university could easily  cover the cost of a parking pass or more free parking for employees and students. 

Over the last 3 years that I have attended MSU, the cost of parking is only getting more expensive each year for students and employees, and you can count on getting a ticket if you don’t pay to park. This will only continue to increase unless we voice our disapproval of the university parking police in hopes to reduce unnecessary parking tickets and parking passes. Why are we funding the police with our parking passes and unfair tickets when they don’t serve us any sort of favor other than a money grab for the university.