Rensselaer students should be aware of a new threat to their credit ranking—RPI parking tickets.

As a graduate of the Class of 2005, I was shocked last week to receive a bill from the bursar. When looking into the bill, it seems I was billed for parking tickets in Fall 2005 and Spring 2006. Considering I moved to Connecticut in the summer of 2005, I was perplexed by these tickets. After calling the RPI parking office, I was told I was being charged for tickets because the parking office and the Bursar are “catching up” on previous parking violations.

In my case, these violations accumulated to $115.00. Since RPI was “catching up,” the tickets were apparently from semesters when I was on campus. However, when I was a student on campus, I never received these tickets, so why would I have contested them? These fines are a very significant amount of money and if I had been aware of these tickets, I would have contested them. Contesting tickets at RPI is hard enough, but contesting tickets that you were never aware of, two years after the fact, and from miles away, is beyond ridiculous.

I’m not the only one. When I called the parking office they shared with me, “Everyone is getting them; people have called who graduated five years ago.” In addition, they decided to reconcile parking tickets through state DMVs, and therefore any family member that parked on campus who received a ticket then showed up on my and other students’ accounts.

As I do admit, some of my peers’ tickets may have been valid; however, the scare tactics of sending recent graduates to a collection agency is a bit baffling.

To me, this is one of the most foolish things that RPI can do to recent alumni, a group whom the Institute is trying very hard to solicit donations from and establish a strong alumni support base from. It’s a complete oversight that these tickets weren’t processed in time and for the bursar to send bills to alumni who have completely paid for their education is wrong. They were cleared for graduation, but are now in jeopardy of having their the credit score affected by this action.

The graduating classes that have been affected by this have the potential to become some of the main donors to the school. This bitter taste in the mouth of alumni will leave the school hurting as a whole, all for a few quick bucks for DPS.

Heath Kent