A typical day for Blaine Hymel, freshman from Thibodaux, starts with class. When he gets out of class, he goes to work giving parking tickets. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays he starts at noon, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays he starts at 1:30 p.m.”I work for about three hours, and I just walk around campus,” Hymel said. “We have certain sections to go to each day. I go check out my section and send our director, Mr. Tommy Ponson, the information.”

Hymel walks around his assigned parking lots giving tickets for absence of or expired parking decals, parking in faculty spaces without a faculty parking permit and parking in a handicapped space. He gives an average of 25 tickets a day.

“Most of the time it is hot,” Hymel says. “When there’s a breeze or when it is overcast, it’s not so bad having to walk around.”

Students displaced during the hurricanes with the parking decal of the college they attended will not get a ticket for not having a Nicholls’ decal.

Hymel can give tickets in resident lots to those parked in the wrong zone.

“I guess my favorite part of the job,” Hymel says, “is finding people that park in the handicap parking spots that actually do have handicap parking permits and not the ones that are only parking there just to hurry and get to class.”

The ticket with the biggest fine is a ticket for parking in a handicapped space with out a handicapped sticker.

“You have to look around the entire vehicle for a parking permit,” Hymel says. Though parking decals are supposed to be placed on the bottom of the passenger side of the rear window, not everyone puts it there. He also has to look for a faculty permit.

Hymel once wrote a ticket for a car near the residence halls that did not have a parking decal. When he put the handheld computer and printer on the hood of the car to tape the ticket to the window, the car’s alarm went off. “That was the weirdest thing that has happened to me on the job,” Hymel says.

The most interesting thing Hymel has seen on the job is the sorority flag football practice and early softball training.

He also had a few students walk up to their vehicles as he was writing them a parking ticket, and they got angry.

Hymel said that most of the people who receive parking tickets appeal them. “I have never seen somebody walk in the office and actually pay the ticket, most are appealed,” Hymel says.

Hymel himself has never received a speeding or parking ticket.

“I have only been here for one semester. I will probably get one eventually,” Hymel said. He says working in parking enforcement teaches him where to park and where not to park.