Editor’s note: This is the second story in a three-part series featuring NIU’s Campus Parking Services. The final part will appear in Thursday’s paper.

Nothing quite ruins a day like a little pink envelope under the windshield wiper.

Campus Parking Services issued about 60,000 parking tickets between August 2003 and August 2004, said Laura Lundelius , coordinator of parking and traffic.

For fiscal year 2004, the university collected $429,372 in parking ticket revenues, and $384,507 has been collected since late February for FY05. The money collected supports a university reserve fund and funds the parking office, maintenance and repair of parking lots and other university projects, Lundelius said.

Three full-time parking enforcement employees are paid $8.42 an hour to issue parking tickets. They work Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. University Police also issue tickets, but at all times.

Lundelius said a student can appeal a parking ticket within 10 days if the student feels there were extenuating circumstances or if parking services issued a ticket unjustly. Students can file appeals in the parking office or online at the parking Web site, www.niu.edu/parking.

This year, 1,297 appeals have been filed. Of those, 643 appeals were approved and 384 were denied. There also were 270 special instruction appeals.

Special-instruction appeals are the in-between of being approved or denied, Lundelius said. The category applies to students who appeal a ticket and are found partially but not totally responsible for the fine, so the fine may be reduced.

Lundelius said she believes most students pay tickets. If a violator does not pay a fine within 21 days, the fine is applied to the student’s Bursar Account.

Campus Parking Services sends monthly bills to violators who have no NIU affiliation, Lundelius said. Currently, the university does not use an independent collection agency, but it is looking at alternative ways of collecting fines. Non-affiliates who receive three or more tickets totaling more than $40 are put on a tow list, and any vehicle affiliated with them found on campus is towed at their expense.

Brittany Swantek, a sophomore preventative and rehabilitative exercise science major, received a $20 parking ticket last month for parking in a 15-minute parking space for 45 minutes. She said she could not find an open meter.

“I don’t plan on paying it, but I am sure it will show up on my Bursar’s and my parents will end up paying for it,” Swantek said.

Swantek said she thought this was her third or fourth ticket this year and there is not enough parking on campus.

Swantek has a brown parking pass and said she knows of brown spaces only along a small side street by the stadium and a small parking lot behind Anderson Hall.

Lundelius said Lot V, near Barsema Hall and the Engineering Building, has 127 brown spaces and South and West Stadium drives offer 81 spaces, but the spaces are shared with yellow and blue permit holders.