Every semester, I pay a fee to support the university’s “transportation infrastructure.” This “transportation” fee is assessed every semester to pay for parking structures like the new high-rise parking garage that I have been hearing all about.

I drove in circles around the Davie campus last week trying to find this new parking garage. I looked for it near the Broward Community College parking lot. You know, the one that floods over and turns into Lake BCC every time it rains.

I drove over to the FAU side of campus looking for this parking garage – no luck there either. I couldn’t even find an open parking space, let alone a gigantic parking garage.

I continued on past the FAU parking lot, past the tennis courts and Liberal Arts building, when I came upon this huge dirt lot. Maybe the university hadn’t gotten around to landscaping, but I thought for sure that I had found the monument that portions of my skyrocketing tuition had helped build – I had finally found the elusive parking garage.

I was right. My skyrocketing tuition had helped pay for something. It helped pay for a really expensive dirt parking lot. But I couldn’t worry about any of that now; the time I spent searching for the parking garage had made me late for the first day of class.

As I jumped one enormous mud puddle after another, trying to shake the dirt off my shoes as I went, I noticed an article in the University Press that I was using for an umbrella (and you thought there was no real use for the school paper).

There was a story about the new parking garage in Boca. I had spent all that time looking, and there wasn’t even a garage on the Davie campus; and it didn’t look like there were any plans to build one, either.

According to Michelle Winters, the Director of Traffic & Parking, there are plans to build two more parking garages on the Boca campus. Is that before or after they turn the dirt lot in Davie into a million dollar parking garage?

Winters told the UP that while they have gotten some complaints about the location of the new parking garage, she was looking at the “need” before determining if the other campuses get garages.

Well, Ms. Winters, here are some complaints and some needs. I don’t want to drive around for fifteen minutes looking for a spot, while the students in Boca get their choice of scores of open spots in a brand new parking garage.

I don’t NEED to drive my recently washed white car through puddles because the best that the Director of Traffic and Parking could do for the decal-buying students of Davie is supply them with a “swamp.” What about us Davie kids, Ms. Winters? Don’t we deserve to see our “decal dollars at work?”