An apology was made, and more details were clarified this week at the latest Students’ Association meeting by Derek Peterson, assistant vice president of Business Services and head of parking services,
When confronted about not publicly announcing the updated parking rules, Peterson said, “I just want you guys to know that I wholeheartedly apologize for that. We’ll correct that.” They plan to send out an email to the student body to help make more people aware of the changes.
The main policy that was implemented saw a lot of initial controversy, which was the addition of repeat offender policy for four types of violations. This meant that for certain infractions you could get a ticket up to $200 and be forced to park in lot 170 for the rest of the year. Any future infractions will cause your car to be towed. This scale does restart annually, so you are able to start fresh each fall.
Bob Matthews, chairman of the parking and traffic committee, said “The drastic fine at $200 was meant to get people’s attention.” However, they did talk about how they were considering changing the increments for the first few infractions from going up by $25 to going up by only $15, but that is not official.
The changes were made to the policies that they saw the greatest number of violations for, and that “99 % of our campus community isn’t going to be impacted by this,” Peterson said. Matthews then said later, “you have 60 people making up 10 % of the violations.”
Funding was also discussed at the meeting. The money that parking services make from passes and tickets stays within the parking services department. That means that money from parking tickets and parking passes goes to fund things like snow removal, general maintenance, and even their recently purchased second enforcement vehicle.
After parking services wrapped up, standard SA operation resumed. One of the first things that they discussed was the scoreboard in the Dana J. Dykehouse Stadium. The current scoreboard is a temporary solution, and they hope to get a new one by Fall 2025.
They are still working on getting scooters on campus. There was a formatting issue and according to Vice President Hayden Bentz, “that set us back monumentally, but we’re still working on getting that process completed. It should be done in the next couple of weeks.”
The Gender and Sexualities Alliance discussed how their karaoke night was a major success. They also finalized their drag show performers.
The University Program Council talked about their upcoming taste of Brookings giveaway. More information on that can be found on their Instagram @sdsupc.
The night then finished with the senators passing two commemorations. One was to dedicate Hispanic heritage month on SDSU to be from Sept. 15 through Oct. 15. The other one was to commemorate Jay Molock for his “exemplary service to the students at South Dakota State University” according to the document. Both were passed unanimously.
