ETSU students have been getting parking tickets for illegal parking because the parking decals are falling off of students’ windows. The failure of parking decals has been going on for awhile, but just recently there have been several complaints from students receiving tickets due to the malfunction of the parking decal. Although the complaints in January increased, the amount of tickets given now has decreased from 3 to 1 a week. This decrease in parking tickets was a huge improvement between the months of January and March.

“I complained about the ticket I was getting because I had a decal and it just fell off later that day,” said sophomore Jill Russell. Russell was able to fight the ticket and did not have to pay, but it began to get annoying when she had to go and fight tickets every other week. The last ticket she had to fight was the third week in March.

She then came up with an idea of taping it to the window just like so many others have. “All I want is for them to see that I have a parking decal,” said Russell. “I don’t have the time to go every couple of weeks to fight the pointless tickets I’m getting,” she said.

Lauren Crow, a sophomore, agrees that the parking decals are a major problem, which is why she walks to school from her apartment at Campus Ridge.

“That’s why I like living at Campus Ridge and not worrying about parking on campus,” she said. “We have assigned parking so I am sure to have a parking spot without dealing with the parking decals.”

Some students at ETSU express their feelings of parking tickets with a little more frustration. Tyler Wells, a transfer student, says that he has received tickets because his decal fell off his window.

“Although I did get the ticket reversed, I do not have the time to go down to public safety and argue every ticket,” he said. “They need to realize that students have a lot to do, especially at the end of the semester, and we may not have time to go argue every ticket.”

One of the logical reasons for decals falling off of windows could be the removal and replacement of the decal from one car to another, which is causing the decals glue to wear off.

But all three students interviewed; Russell, Crow and Wells all say, that their decals stayed on their car windows and have not been moved since August when they put them there.

An area supervisor of Buc Ridge Apartments, James Mullins, was surprised to hear that the parking decals were falling off of windows.

Mullins promised that he would tell the parking staff that the decals given out this year need to be improved for next year.

Mullins has been working with the parking staff to fix the current problem, so next semester students will not have these mishaps with parking decals.

The students were happy to hear that Mullins had taken some action in trying to get better parking decals for next year. Neither Russell nor Wells has received a ticket in over a month.

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