As a young, but experienced public research university, FIU often times boasts about its inclusivity. For that, however, a university must be both financially and physically accessible; that is, both affordable and reachable, of which FIU has successfully achieved the former, but unfortunately lags behind in the latter. As a public institution, FIU was designed to serve multiple communities in South Florida, but without comprehensible public transportation to and from FIU’s multiple campuses, the university only stands to serve a few—and most definitely not all—of its prospective constituents. This shortcoming in and of itself not only undermines FIU’s mission to achieve inclusivity, but it altogether questions its purpose and commitment to providing “high-quality teaching, state-of-the-art research and creative activity, and collaborative engagement with [their] local …communities.”[1]

For that reason, we urge FIU to extend its lobbying efforts with our local government in providing accessible public transportation that will allow all individuals with the ability to pursue higher education and professional opportunities. By doing so, FIU fulfills its mission, becomes a leader at decreasing pollution in Miami and its surrounding municipalities, and strengthens its position as a leader in the global objective of decreasing its carbon footprint. The local communities that FIU is designed to serve include, but are not limited to, the numerous municipalities and neighborhoods that reside within the Miami-Dade district area. Of those, largely undeserved are unincorporated Miami-Dade localities including Kendall, Kendall Lakes, The Hammocks, Richmond Heights and municipalities such as Pinecrest, Homestead, Cutler Bay (and any other south), and Doral, and Miami Springs (and any other north).

Evidently, FIU has implemented various methods in order to serve its communities and fulfill its mission. Of these, FIU has implemented a largely holistic admission process, bolstered its attraction to international communities, and expanded its financial support for it students.  Most importantly, however, FIU manages multiple campuses that make the university more accessible to a wider range of communities within and beyond the previously described area. Nevertheless, even then these campuses are often specialized and not equal in allocated resources, support, and provisions. Due to the disparity in resource allocation and course offerings amongst the campuses, many FIU students find themselves needing to travel between FIU’s localities as a way to engage their passions and finalize their academics. A way FIU currently achieves this is by providing the Golden Panther Express (GPE) and the Cats Shuttle, connecting FIU’s Modesto Maidique Campus (MMC) and Biscayne Bay Campus (BBC) as well as MMC and FIU’s Engineering Center (EC) respectively. Despite these efforts, however, the GPE—the most necessary transportation service connecting MMC and BBC—is not free of charge and does not operate during the weekends. With that said, often times, weekend academic, extracurricular, and professional activities—and even some weekday classes—are arduous, if not impossible, to participate in. More information detailing the different specialization and course offerings respective to FIU’s various campuses are outline in FIU’s admissions website.

What we propose then, is that in a partnership with Miami-Dade and local municipalities in the area, FIU ought to strive to restructure current bus routes in order to cover a wider range of constituents, or altogether try to create new lines of buses to serve communities that are secluded from the more general population. By more general population, we refer to communities not directly, or at least reasonably indirectly, not served by FIU’s current buses such as the 8, 11, and 24—which all serve only communities east of FIU’s MMC campus. Likewise, FIU must work with local communities in providing access to those forms of transportation, including local trolleys, in order to lessen constituents’ time spent reaching those bus stops.

Some may argue that there is already public transportation serving these communities, providing various pathways to MMC or other campuses. However, these arguments fail to recognize the overwhelming and challenging scheduling and time consumption such connections fail to address. From the unreliability of Miami-Dade’s bus schedules to the deficient bus maintenance, not only does the lack of direct transportation to FIU yield academic repercussions (from not being able to attend classes or other required programs), but it may also lead to health complications (birthed by the frustration and stress of depending on a tenuous transportation system as well as the lack of sleep from the need to wake up earlier than necessary).

All in all, with FIU’s efforts to improve our neighborhoods public transportation system and by providing more affordable and reliable transportation between FIU’s multiple campuses, not only does the higher education institution lower the monetary and environmental cost of pollution—and not only does it promote the use of public transportation around Miami-Dade and South Florida (propelling an increase in funds due to higher use of public transportation)—, but it also manifests is mission and vision to become an inclusive institution that provide all with the ability to pursue a college education; and not to mention, its position as a university worlds ahead.