Bismarck State College is switching gears on its parking permit policy for the fall 2022 semester.
Campus police notified students in early September that parking permits will be necessary to park on campus. Faculty and staff on campus were also required to obtain a parking pass. BSC was one of two institutions in the North Dakota University System that had not already required the use of parking permits.
The main focus of the new policy is to prioritize student parking access on campus. Campus Police Chief Matthew Giddings said that parking permits will help campus police regulate vehicles on campus.
“The parking passes help us to identify who should be here and who should not,” he said. “It comes down to helping with vehicular and pedestrian mobility.”
BSC will not charge for the permits that are required to be placed in the lower left corner of the back window of vehicles. This is a contrast to other institutions in the state that can charge up to $180 for annual student parking passes.
Students living on campus were required to obtain a parking permit in the past. The campus police department used to charge for these but has since dropped this requirement. Giddings said he does not plan on charging for campus passing permits anytime soon, opting to have the department absorb the costs instead.
The change in policy coincides with the implementation of a software called T2 Parking. The software is currently being used by other NDUS schools.
This software allows campus police to issue citations. The system allows the college to put a hold on the accounts of those who may be receiving multiple citations and have not been paying them. Giddings said this measure has not had to be taken yet.
T2 Parking also allows the campus to identify the ownership of vehicles on campus. Giddings said that BSC also sees around 2000 Bismarck Public Schools students everyday, and the permits help distinguish between the two demographics.
“Knowing the difference between our BSC and our high school students is a nice piece for us,” Giddings said. “If we have more BSC violations or more public school violations, we know where to go to address those issues.”
Campus police will be able to use the software to enforce parking requirements for guests on campus. The NECE often hosts events which can take up a lot of parking. Event attendees are encouraged to park in the lower level lot of the NECE building; however, attendees will often park in the main lot. Guests will be able to register their vehicles allowing campus police to ticket vehicles that do not park in the lower NECE lot.
“Prior to us issuing permits to all students, there was no way for us to enforce that,” Giddings said.
He added that the software can double as a tally system for the campus to see how many guests are actually attending on-campus events.
The only parking restrictions for off-campus students are resident hall parking lots. Students living in the resident halls on-campus can park in any student lot on campus. All students are barred from parking in employee lots or reserved spots.
While campus police encourage everyone to obtain their permit, they have not been ticketing vehicles without one yet. There are currently around 1200 on-campus students that have not gotten a parking permit yet.
Students who have not obtained their parking permit yet can do so by applying for one online and picking it up from the campus police department located on the lower level of the Student Union.
(Find on Page 3 of Mystician 84.3)