A few weeks ago, NT Daily (a newspaper on campus for UNT) pushed out an article discussing parking, charges and the fact that UNT Police Department is no longer going to be the ones overseeing parking for the university. One striking factor in this article was the fact that the author used this article as a way to seemingly brag that we essentially beat UT Arlington, TWU and UT Austin in something, but what was it that we beat them in? Charging people for their parking fines.

When I first moved to Denton and became a student of the University of North Texas, one of my first purchases was a parking pass to park on campus. You’d think this would’ve been something that saved me a lot of headache, time, and frustration, right? Wrong. It felt like it only added to it. Not only did I pay a little over $100 for a sticker to go on my windshield, but there was truly never any parking in any of the parking lots that my parking pass allowed me to park in, unless, of course, I wanted to get to campus at 5 in the morning.

The article pushed out by NT Daily states that in the 2015 school year, the University of North Texas generated roughly $1.2 million in revenue from parking citations on campus. UTA made $346,501, UT made $937,867 and TWU made $120,000. When asked what that money is used for, the Department of Parking and Transportation director Geary Robinson gave the idea that the money goes to funding parking services like cleaning the lots and improving lighting around campus. “I don’t have any problem looking at someone that’s gotten a ticket and saying, your money just helped repave that lot, or plant that tree, or replace that light,” Robinson told Alejandro Medellin of NT Daily.

Personally, I’m having trouble understanding how it takes $1.2 million to change a lightbulb or plant a tree. If you were to walk out to most of the parking lots on campus, you will find tons of trash from the weekend like empty liquor bottles, empty beer bottles, to-go boxes from restaurants and much more trash. What part of the $1.2 million is being put towards cleaning that up when it’s never actually clean? Not to mention that there are tons of potholes in our parking lots and where potholes used to be, there is poorly done patch-work making the lot uneven and bumpy. As far as lighting on campus, I’ve been here over two years now and not only have I not noticed any more lighting on campus than there was before, but I (and according to Twitter, many others feel the same) don’t feel safe walking from a parking lot to the library after the sun goes down because of the lack of adequate lighting.

After walking to and from campus through the parking lots after parking on private streets nearly every day this semester, I can’t figure out how any of the money that the department gets actually goes back into the parking services. Anyone can head over to the parking lot across the street from the art building and see that it isn't kept up the way they say it is.

Surely the awful patchwork and inadequate lighting doesn’t cost the students $1.2 million, which brings me to the question: what do they really use that money for?