I felt compelled to write this as I sat idly waiting for a parking spot at USF. Any of the thousands of students who try to park know the frustration I felt in that moment and daily, and that is precisely what this is about: the frustration of USF parking. To be frank, and pardon my French, but USF parking is annoying, aggravating, nettlesome, and to use my well-earned college vocabulary, vexatious. A parking spot is as easy to find at the University of South Florida as it is to find a Twinkie at Wal-Mart (which now is quite impossible). As a non-resident student, the charge for an S permit is a mere $186.18, or to put it into todays terms, about half the price of an iPad mini. Add a $40 parking citation I received a few weeks ago and now its up to two thirds of an iPad mini. This citation now leads me to what has been the final straw with the parking after being here for four loyal years. While refereeing USF Intramural flag football games at the Magnolia Fields, I received a citation for parking on the grass, as maybe a good thirty students were. I do not usually park on the grass, but I felt the overcapacity allowed for an exception. Apparently I was wrong. Now, I read in the paper that students dont take advantage of the appeals process. Well, I did, and my first appeal got denied, and then my well-presented case to the USF Supreme Court did nothing to reverse my citation either. I thought I was as good as Cochran up there (thats the lawyer who represented OJ Simpson four you young whippersnappers). I counted the parking spaces at the Magnolia lot and then the amount of minimum individuals that would be required to be at the fields during an intramural game, and proved it was impossible for that lot to contain even those persons, minus spectators. In my opinion, that is a convincing argument. So if that was not enough, what is enough to change the courts minds, and what is the gain to the appeals process, only to get denied in the end?
Stephen Girgis is a senior majoring in biomedical
sciences.