A story trending on Facebook of a North Carolina college student paying his parking fines in pennies reminded me of an overlooked incident similar to this in Bangor a few years ago.

A UNCC student has racked up $110 in illegal parking fees on his college campus. He is not protesting the fact that he deserved the tickets or not but rather what the money from his paid fines goes to.

As a protest to paying his fines he decided to collect $110 in pennies to use to pay. After collecting 11,000 pennies he had enough and went to the school to pay his fines. Armed with 5 boxes of $25 worth of pennies he sat there for almost 4 hours while they counted every single one. His reasoning behind the act is his money is wasted so he would waste some of their time.

This incident reminded me of something that happened on the Husson University campus back in 2012. After some confusion with where purchased parking decals were supposed to be placed on vehicles some students received what they thought were unfair parking tickets. So in protest, student Jesse Larkin decided to pay his $10 fine in pennies. To his surprise when he went to drop off his payment it was not accepted at first, and then reluctantly. The next day the President of Jesse's section of the school, NESCom, returned the pennies to him along with his ticket asking for a more reasonable form of payment.

At this point should we get rid of pennies all together? If paying in only pennies is not acceptable should we even have them at all? Should you be able to pay for things using only pennies?

More From WQCB Brewer Maine