Texas Tech University

Mailbag: Getting the Boot

Allen Ramsey

October 7, 2022

Mailbag

What does it take to get a boot on your vehicle at Texas Tech?

Welcome to the Mailbag!

Here you’ll find our first attempt to answer some of your questions, which we’ve curated from a few different places. Keep in mind we have this email address open for any questions you would like to submit. 

For today, we’re going to take on a common question from our chat and one we pulled from Reddit, just for a little bit of fun. 

With that said, here we go!

From a concerned parent:

My son just called me very sick. Is there a campus nurse? 

Concerned parent, you ask a great question and one that we get on a regular basis. 

And it’s understandable. Your children are out on their own for the very first time and there are a lot of things to figure out. One of them, of course, is what they should do when they’re not feeling well.

Student Health Services
To find out what you can expect during your Student Health Services visit, click here.

Luckily, here at Texas Tech University, we have plenty of resources devoted to making sure your children – our students – have everything they need in these types of situations.

Through Student Health Services we offer primary and urgent care along with a bevy of other services including women’s health, integrated mental healthcare, sports medicine, a nurse clinic and nurse advice messaging center, travel health, lab services, x-rays, and a full-service pharmacy

In this case we’re assuming this is the first time your child has needed medical attention since coming to school, so the first step is for your child to call Student Health Services (phone number can be found here, but they’ll have to make the call themselves) to get registered as a patient. The call is going to take a few minutes and it’ll help to have an insurance card handy if they have one. 

Once they’re registered as a patient, and hopefully have their first appointment set, they’ll be able to make all future appointments through the MyTeamCare Patient Portal

When your child does show up to the clinic they should bring an insurance card, the date of birth for the primary card holder, a Texas Tech ID, a list of medications they’re currently taking and any other relevant medical information.

Following the first visit, the MyTeamCare app will be their best friend for managing their medical care. On the app they’ll be able to make appointments, talk to a nurse and check lab results. 

We hope this information finds you all in good health, and if not, we hope it helps you get well soon. 

From a student with parking issues:

How many parking citations until you get a boot?

Here’s a great question that we genuinely hope you never need to ask. 

This student went on to explain that their parking problems were common and the number of citations received was troubling.

Parking Boot

With that in mind, we start with this simple advice:

STOP GETTING PARKING CITATIONS!

We know how hard that sounds. You pull into a parking spot, just looking to run into a building for a few minutes to pick up whatever you left behind and BAM, the ticket fairy drives by and suddenly you owe more money. 

But if you really want to avoid the boot, you should look at the common denominator in every one of your citations. (Quick hint: It’s you.)

Here are few tools that can help you skirt those troublesome tickets. 

Familiarize yourself with your own parking plan and the rules and regulations of parking on campus (you can find those here). Yes, you will have to read through a good few documents, but if you’re really rolling through parking tickets like they’re cheese sticks from Spanky’s, you can consider your reading time a paid job for all the money you’ll save.  

We know you’re busy. Most of the people on campus are busy. And some of them stay busy by driving around and catching you parking in the wrong spot. It might cost you a few extra steps and some extra time, but again, consider it work. Each time you make the decision to park your car in the correct spot you’ve made a decision to save money. 

But because we promised to seek real answers to your questions, we reached out to Transportation & Parking Services to do just that. 

Turns out, you get the boot when you rack up six or more outstanding citations or have one outstanding citation that is more than 60 days overdue. 

That’s it for this week’s mailbag. Remember to send us an email with any questions you would like to have answered in a future mailbag and to pay your parking tickets on time.  


More Mailbag

Mailbag
Click to send an email to Mailbag.

 

 

Texas Tech Today