Jennifer,
I am looking to see if I can spot anything. Usually the t_variable problem is a result to an incorrect closure - like a missing curly brace or perhaps a variable creates a quotation that prematurely closes a statement that is still being evaluated. The other thing to check in your end is even the original declaration of PHP. A space between <? and "php" alone will throw that error.
Maybe Jason will have a more keen eye than myself but I am going to browse this to see what I can find.
Brian