One Fine Day: Fines at Dartmouth

By Benjamin Patch | Wednesday, April 23, 1997

'Yeah, he was really drunk — he actually could barely even speak he was so sick. But we didn't take him to Dick's House because of the fine and everything.' I heard this story from a friend a couple of months ago and it is all too common at Dartmouth. Had she taken her friend into Dick's House, he would have found himself with a bill for $550. Stories of absurd fines abound.

Woody Eckels, head of maintainance at the Office of Residential Life (ORL), has claimed on record that 'damage, whether it is communal or individual, is billed at actual cost of repairs. There are no additional fines or fees associated with the charge.'

Last summer, a sophomore removed the posters from the bulletin boards in Massachusettes Row and left them below the boards. He was subsequently billed $64.40, since 'cleaning up the papers took them [the janitors] quite a while.'

Assuming that janitors are making $10 an hour and are paid time-and-a-half overtime, that still leaves one janitor working over 4 hours (half a day's work) to pick up unscattered paper in 3 mid-size residential halls. One janitor in South Mass was yelled at because he threw away several flyers he found during his regular course of duty. His co-workers berated him because 'he gets time-and-a-half' for such work.

ORL also charges $50 for a lost key, when the True Value of Hanover will cut a new key for one dollar and change.

At Princeton, the fine for an illegally parked car is $20. At any other school in the Ivy League, a parking ticket will run you no more than $15. A ticket in the town of Hanover is only $5 for an expired meter, $10 if you're illegally parked. Yet Dartmouth charges $25 for the first offense and $50 for the second offense. Dartmouth Parking Operations has even been known to place 'parking boots,' metal devices which lock one wheel in place, on student's cars.

According to one member of the college staff, 'they [Parking Operations] have distributed parking permits for more cars than there is parking and they are taking more and more spaces away from us. It leaves those of us who pay for 'that privelege' looking for spots on the road or further down the road.'

Director of Parking Operations Bill Barr also runs the DA$H program — the student debit account instituted this year. One student observed that 'his policies have been controversial, arbitrary, nitpicking, even mean, and students and faculty alike have had run-ins with him. Basically his job in both offices is to squeeze as much money out of students (and faculty, in parking) as he can, in manipulative and strong-armed ways. He is both an unpleasant and an uncompromising person. I hear that his treatment of faculty is as despotic and petty as his treatment of students.' He has told staff members that it is their 'privelege' to park on campus and once told the Daily Dartmouth that 'students are here, they live here, [so] they don't need access to their cars nearby.'

When asked why it costs so much ($20) to replace a DA$H card, Barr replied, 'to make people understand that their card is a valuable item and you need it and shouldn't lose it.' The DA$H office will charge you $35 if you lend your ID to someone else.

An illegally parked car will run you only half of what a bike will. Dartmouth routinely fines its students $100 for bicycles left in an area 'not designated for bikes.' When asked about a $100 bike fine, Harris Schwartz, Head of Housing at Columbia University, noted that 'We don't have a bicycle fine unless the bike does some kind of damage. We try to do very little in the way of fining to add additional fees and costs to the housing price.'

Cornell's Head of Maintenance was a bit more flabbergasted, saying, 'We don't have bike fines. Bikes aren't worth enough to fine. That is ridiculous.' In fact, Harvard is the only other Ivy League school with any kind of bike fine — an illegally parked bicycle will cost you $5 at Harvard.

One '98 has been fined $150 every term for the last three terms because he doesn't have a Physical Education credit. He has also been charged an additional $50 on four other occasions for failinf Physical education.

I was charged $50 because I missed two ski lessons this winter on top of the money I had spent on lessons, a lift ticket, and a bus pass.

The athletic fines are only one example of 'unapproved fines' — fines levied by a department without the approval of the Parkhurst administration. According to Student Assembly President John Heavey, 'Some departments have developed a dependency on fines' and 'fines are used as a general solution to any behavioral problem and there's never really been a college evaluation of them.'
Even the fines imposed by Parkhurst are rather stiff. You can expect to shell out $100 for altering your D-plan after it is due. Forget to register for your off term? Expect a $200 bill. If you drop a class after the first week of school, you'll be charged $5 for it.

However, these fines pale in comparison to the highest and most detrimental fine. This is the fine imposed on intoxicated students who are brought to Dick's House, the student health service.

One sophomore was recently taken by ambulance to the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center after officers suspected alcohol poisoning. There he was given an I.V. After a few hours he was sent to Dick's House until the following afternoon. According to the student, Dick's House has an agreement with the hospital. They will not bill an intoxicated student for his stay both at Dick's House and at the hospital. After an ambulance ride and an IV, his bill came to a total of $178.

Contrast this with intoxicated students who are picked up by Safety and Security and brought to Dick's House, or even brought there by concerned friends. They are fined $550 for their one-night stay in which they are given a bed, monitored by two nurses, given clean hospital linens, and a breakfast of toast.

They are also not allowed to leave Dick's House until they have a Blood Alcohol Content of under .005%, which is quite low, considering that, in most states, the legal limit to drive an automobile is .010%.

According to Jessica Russo, chair of the Student Health Advisory Board, Dr. Jack Turco, the director of the College health service, has shown her the cost breakdown. She noted that if the college is using it to raise revenue then it is only a 'tiny fraction' of the fine.

She also emphasized that Dick's House provides free health care to almost all sick Dartmouth students and held up the Women's Health Programs and the extremely low prices of the Dick's House Pharmacy as examples of Dick's House services to students.

Consider a moderately intoxicated student who is taken into custody at Dick's House at 2 a.m. and is released at 8 a.m. the next morning. Allowing $25 an hour for each of the two nurses, that still leaves $250 for hospital linens, an empty bed, and a piece of toast. Regardless of how long a student stays, as long as they blow a breathalyzer over .005%, they automatically foot the $550 bill.

According to Student Assembly President John Heavey, administrative fines charged just to student DA$H accounts came to over $76,000 for the fall term of 1996. In his words, 'fines are a universal aggravation among students.'

One Fine Day: Fines at Dartmouth

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