Commuter student Michelle Pilloff '06 jokes that she is single-handedly financing Brandeis University with her parking tickets. "I have over $400 in fines," she says. Pilloff, like many commuter students, has a parking permit for T-lot, which she says "is always completely full" by mid-morning. This presents a real problem when she arrives for class at noon. She says that unless someone leaves just as she arrives, she's forced to park in X-lot and risk getting a ticket that oddly enough, is sometimes waived in appeals and sometimes is not.Many students agree that ticketing practices at Brandeis are unfair on three levels-the frequency of tickets given, the price of the tickets given and the instances in which the tickets are given due to a scarcity of parking on campus.

Ashkan Hamzelou '08, permitted to park his car only in a lot far from his room in East Quad, thought he'd take a chance by briefly parking his J-Lot-permitted car in D-Lot. After coming back from his room only to discover a ticket on his windshield, he remained indifferent. He got in his car and nonchalantly threw the ticket into his back seat with a pile of others.

"I'm so used to it, I just don't react anymore," he says.

"It's ridiculous that I can't be permitted to park in my own lot though if there are so many empty spots in it. Every time I get a ticket, I just have to laugh because it's so unfair. I drove for four years at home and never received one ticket. I've had 10 since the beginning of this semester." It is for this reason he says that he might leave his car at home next year.

Hamzelou, like many drivers at Brandeis, is fed up but irreverent about the school's parking system. With limited parking places allotted to students, Brandeis police officers write up to 10,000 tickets per year, some warnings, some collected on and some waived says Head of University Services Mark Collins.

Although students may feel they pay outlandish sums for Brandeis parking tickets, Collins says the $75,000-100,000 accrued from ticketing is not very much in light of an operating budget of over $263.3 million.

"Needless to say," he says, "we write revenue from tickets into our expected annual revenues when planning a budget." Projected ticketing revenue goes into an "auxiliary revenue" section of the budget.

Auxiliary revenue consists of income from dining services, residence halls and events, and totaled $24.5 million in fiscal year 2006, according to budget documents. Thus, ticketing revenue accounts for .038 of the operating budget.

Given this percentage, Collins says, "any suggestion that Brandeis is trying to balance the budget or gouge with ticketing for financial purposes is unfounded. We give out the tickets that we do to maintain order on campus, because if we didn't, people would be parking on the Spingold lawn if they could. In fact, they still do often times."

Some students still do what they can to avoid tickets, resorting to counter-tactics to defend against the ticketing that according to Director of Public Safety Ed Callahan, occurs on campus for four to five hours each day.

"When I park illegally, I like to put one of my prior tickets on my windshield to make the cops think I already have a ticket," Mike Kutzen '08 says. "That way I won't have to deal with getting another one."

Callahan says he objects to claims that ticketing practices are excessive or that his officers scout out places on campus where students are likely to park illegally.

The officers have no special motives to give tickets, Callahan says, and their rate of pay is unrelated to the number of tickets they issue "They don't have any incentives; that's their job," he says. "We hire parking monitors to write tickets and they're here to make sure there's equal, accessible parking for everyone."

Callahan also says he believes ticket prices are reasonable. "I would say the amount students are fined is not excessive at all." His department raised the prices about three years back, he says, and hadn't done so for at least 10 years before that.

Still, some students say that when it comes to parking, all cars are not created equal. Such was the case for Erez Dayan '06 when he returned to the Village area to find a police officer on the verge of ticketing his vehicle.

Dayan was puzzled, he says, because he saw no signs barring parking, but either way, he figured he would not get a ticket if he simply drove away. There were four other cars parked in the lot that should have kept the officer busy, Dayan says. But as he got in his car, the officer told him he was not getting away without a ticket and proceeded to write him a ticket. When Dayan asked why he was not ticketing the other cars, the policeman reportedly said, "Because yours is the nicest one out here."

Callahan says, however, that all parking practices are for the good of the campus and that all violations are dealt with fairly. If a student feels that he has been unfairly penalized, he or she can appeal by completing a form and going to a hearing in front of the parking committee, composed of Brandeis staff and students.

"It's a democratic process," Callahan says.

Dayan says he does not think the appeal system would help him in this situation.

"Of course there is an appeal process, but it would be pitting my word against the cop who ticketed me," he says. "If the cop is this dishonorable, what sort of honest decision can be made by a committee? Also, how can I plan my schedule around parking ticket appeal tribunals if I have to go to New York for a medical school interview? It just doesn't seem right."

Callahan says, though, that parking tickets are necessary and vital for the Brandeis community.

"We're here to ensure that there's a proper organization for parking consistent with University's needs to provide parking for students, staff and faculties," he says. "Unfortunately we have to issue citations which have a financial impact."

Plus, he says, Brandeis students are ultimately benefiting from revenue accrued from citations. "We are a growing school, and the money that we collect goes to the general fund of the university," Callahan says. "It goes back into university enhancements and roads and lights. Nobody's benefiting from tickets issued except the student body itself."

Both Callahan nor Collins said they were unable to comment on if the University plans to build parking structures to accomodate the high volume of drivers. Peter French, Chief Operating officer, could also not be reached for comment.