Although the hours of restricted parking end at 3:30 p.m., drivers can still receive citations for decal placement and parking illegally. Craig Jaccuzzo, director of University Police, said that University Police employs people who write citations until 9:30 p.m. to enforce parking rules for decals, handicapped spaces, fire lanes and other no parking zones.

“We have a large population of nontraditional students that come to class at night, and they feel they don’t need to purchase permits because they only come at night,” Jaccuzzo said. “If we don’t enforce past 3:30, they don’t purchase decals, and they don’t follow the same rules that we make the rest of the student body follow.”

Jaccuzzo said that visitors are required to get permits for the same reason. Visitors’ permits are offered at no charge at the Office of Parking Services.

“Everyone needs some kind of permit to park on campus,” Jaccuzzo said.

Jaccuzzo said that the measures taken by University Police are only meant to increase the available parking spaces. For example, tickets have recently been issued for double-parking.

“If a vehicle is parked on the yellow line or over the yellow line what eventually happens is it cuts the number of parking spaces available, because it pushes everybody down,” Jaccuzzo said. “It’s up to the discretion of the ticket writer.”

Jaccuzzo said that ticketers are trained to make sure that the vehicle is beyond the line and intruding on another parking space.

“Right now, and for the last month and half, I’ve also been having an officer work Monday through Friday just writing speeding tickets,” Jaccuzzo said. “Officers write them in the areas where we have the highest foot traffic, or in the places that have the highest estimated speed.”

Jaccuzzo said that the majority of speeding problems occur on Audubon Avenue, Bowie Road and Ardoyne Drive where drivers will exceed the speed limit by 10 to 15 mph.

“On campus, we’re looking into buying a certain type of mobile radar that we can use on the bicycles and the golf carts,” Jaccuzzo said. “We can’t really use the cars, because it’s so congested.”

Jaccuzzo said that aside from occasional minor issues, University Police has not had many problems with citations for parking or speeding.

“It’s all about informing and educating the students,” Jaccuzzo said.

Parking regulations can be found on the Nicholls Web site at www.nicholls.edu/parking/parking-manual.