You may be wondering why this article is titled, "A Tale of Two Frustrations." It's because this is the story of two people with disabilities who have had frustrating experiences with the Department of Police and Public Safety (D.P.P.S.).
Gina Patterson, a fourth-year doctoral student in clinical psychology who is completing her internship at the MSU Counseling Center, is also a congenital amputee and walks with the aid of a prosthetic leg. She has a handicap parking permit so that she does not have to walk long distances. She recently experienced frustrations with D.P.P.S. when she received a $50 parking ticket for parking in a space designated for people with handicap parking permits.
"They claimed that they could not read the permit even though it was clearly displayed on my dash," Patterson said. She appealed the ticket and D.P.P.S. decided that the ticket was valid and they refused to withdraw it, even though she explained the nature of her disability. Of course, she is appealing to the East Lansing District Court system, but is "baffled" at D.P.P.S.'s insensitivity.
Kevin Kukoleck is also an intern at the MSU Counseling Center. He is a fifth-year doctoral student in clinical psychology and uses a wheelchair much of the time. He has a chronic, progressive form of Muscular Dystrophy. The day he got his ticket, it had snowed enough to have covered his car window. When he came out of Olin at the end of his workday, he had a ticket placed on top of the snow right above where his handicap pass was, hidden beneath the layer of fresh snow. The ticket-giver had not bothered to remove the snow from the windshield to see that Kukoleck was legally parked. Kukoleck is, of course, fighting this ticket, but he has not heard yet from D.P.P.S.
As an aside, according to Kukoleck, "no other cars parked in the lot had a ticket on them." For example, the cars with snow on the windows parked in faculty spaces did not have tickets.
Kukoleck wonders, "Could the ticketer see through the snow to view the parking passes of these cars by magic?"
Has anyone else experienced such frustrations? Does D.P.P.S. need training in diversity issues with people with disabilities? We appreciate D.P.P.S.'s watchfulness over the handicapped parking spaces because it infuriates us to see someone parked in these spaces without a permit. However, D.P.P.S. may have lost sight of the purpose of those parking spaces.