Winthrop faculty and staff parking spaces allow student parking between the hours of 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.
Some spaces “prohibit student parking 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Students may park only in Faculty/Staff spaces where signs with designated times are posted,” according to the campus police website.
“So all of our faculty staff parking lots kind of work like this. There are the 24/7, which means regardless of time or day, students can never park there because we hold them for faculty staff purposes, or events,” WUPD Interim Chief Charles Yearta said.
Behind residence hall Margaret Nance, there is a faculty and staff parking lot across from the Digiorgio Campus Center. It is held 24/7, not only because of faculty and staff, but because it is the main parking lot for McBryde Hall, which hosts a lot of events on the weekends.
The second 24/7 faculty and staff parking lot is for the Parker building, a very small building off Stewart Avenue.
The third 24/7 faculty and staff parking lot is outside on this side of campus across from the withers building.
While street parking areas are faculty staff, they are designated faculty and staff seven days a week between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.
“[The signs] have down below them 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. There are no days on there. The reason there are no days on there is because we have weekend classes, weekend events, things like that. So we reserve those for faculty staff as well,” Yearta said.
There is one sign that Winthrop police are in the process of getting changed.
“It was one of the last holdouts that used to have parking from seven to nine. And I changed them all to seven to five. But that’s the one side we kind of overlook. Currently it is behind Jones Hall and the Phelps loop. And it says it actually says seven to nine, that sign is in the process of getting replaced hopefully, in the next this month, to where it’ll come down and it’ll all say 7:00 to 5:00.” Yearta said.
Aside from updating the 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. sign from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. sign, no policies have changed for faculty and staff parking as of late.
While Winthrop police try to provide ample resources on campus and to make all parking areas are covered adequately, Winthrop police has parking enforcement coverage from 6:00 a.m. to midnight.
As students know, “we have very few parking areas on this campus,” Yearta said. As campus police make their best effort to control these parking areas with the resources available, occasionally you will see the parking enforcement officers work on the weekends to cover that gap.
“We have classes that actually only meet on weekends. They are master level classes, there are some undergrad classes that literally, they are not on campus, except for every third Saturday of the month. And they spend like 12 hours here,” Yearta said. “If I didn’t have parking enforcement that worked on the weekend, those individuals would never buy a parking pass.”
Students who feel that a citation was unjust, are given the opportunity to appeal.
Sophomore mass communication major, Jennifer Cruz was given a ticket of $40 during her freshman year after choosing not to walk from the Cherry Road, Legion parking lot to the Richardson residence hall with groceries at a late hour. When she returned to her car at 7:30 a.m. the next morning, there was a ticket on her car.
Cruz submitted an appeal for this ticket but after her second time receiving a parking citation, she was not granted an appeal after submitting.
“It was when it was cold out though around this time, I went to the walmart for medicine and went to get food and it was really late and I didn’t want to walk from legion to Richardson alone in the dark and cold so I parked right in front of Richardson but when I explained they didn’t care,” Cruz said. “I haven’t gotten one for [faculty and staff] this year because I wake up early to move my car, but it’s insane that should even be a thing. Waking up at 6:00 am for what?”
Yearta explained that students have the chance to appeal tickets up to 14 days after receiving a citation.
“You have the ability to appeal that. First step is we issue the ticket usually on our electronic writers, we issue those tickets out. At the bottom of that ticket, it has information on how to appeal that ticket. Once that ticket is processed, which is usually about 24 hours after the fact, you will then get a follow up email to your Winthrop account saying, ‘hey, on this day in time, you got this, you know, citation for whatever it is location, fine amount, all that’. And then at the bottom, and again says, These are the, this is the process to appeal if you feel it was unjust. Our process is from the time you get that ticket, you’ve got 14 days to appeal it,” Yearta said.
“[T]hen a committee that’s made up of students and faculty staff meet to discuss it to literally review all those, and they sign off on them and they discuss some and they decide if this person is going to have their ticket voided for lack of a better word, and it’s made a warning, and then there’s no fine attached to it. … There are five members on that committee, they all have a vote. The police department is there but we do not have a vote. So all the tickets that we write, we do not get a say on if they stay or go so to speak.” Yearta said.
Once the committee has decided, a follow up email is sent to students updating them on whether their ticket was voided and made a warning or if it was upheld and the student will have to pay.
Now that Winthrop police have allowed students to request an appeal before they have to pay for their ticket, the number of appeals has now increased.
“In this entire year thus far, I think we’ve received upwards of 300 appeals. And they are still like I said the committee only meets for an hour every two weeks. So they take time to get through a lot of these. It is not uncommon to be honest with you to where you file an appeal and you may not hear anything for four weeks. It just takes time to…get through that many that come in so fast.” Yearta said.
