By Jared Crain, Campus Carrier Deputy News Editor

While students are occasionally required to pay fines on campus for various reasons, like parking tickets and library fees, they usually do not know where these fines go.

According to Berry Police Chief Bobby Abrams, vehicular misdemeanors like speeding and parking tickets on campus are actually handled beyond the scope of the police department.

“All parking fines go directly to the Business Office,” Abrams said. “We do not collect fines, they are paid at the cashier’s window.”

Brad Reeder, assistant vice president for financial planning, explained that there is not a single financial destination for fines. Instead, there is a general Berry fund for such fees.

“Most fees don’t go towards something specific but to the operations as a whole,” Reeder said.

A large source of fines charged to students come from the Memorial Library in the form of late fees for checkout or reserve items and the occasional replacement fees at the end of the year when books and items are lost or damaged.

Sherre Harrington, director of the Memorial Library, said that the library has not charged students for late books in 8 or 9 years. Students are only charged when the books are ruined or not returned by the end of the school year.

However, the library does charge fees for technology checkouts that are overdue, and the most common source of fines is from borrowed laptops.

Michelle Horton, access services coordinator of the Memorial Library, concurs that library fines essentially depend on the item checked out.

“We try not to be too rigid,” Horton said. “We want students to have a window to find and locate missing items, but we need to know sooner if technology’s missing.”

Horton and Harrington explained that all library fees essentially end up in one of two places. General fines typically end up in the operations as a whole, as Reeder mentioned, and replacement fees go towards purchasing library items that students have lost or damaged and have had to pay for.

“Library fines and fees are deposited in a general account that is taken into consideration when the library’s budget is set,” Harrington said. “Replacement fees go into a fund used to buy technology that has not been returned.”