COLUMN: Rice can do without shuttle buses
When I first heard about this, I decided to let it slide. After all, I'm not going to be here next year, so why not let someone who will be affected take up this crusade? But when only one letter came in last week, I was completely stunned. I can only assume the stadium lot parkers who heard about this inane plan were either struck dumb by the sheer injustice or launched into a state of disbelief based on its cruel transparency.
There was a time, not too many years ago, when parking was free. And when I say free, I mean so free that you could park almost anywhere on campus without paying a dime. Then, they restricted free parking to the stadium lot. And now, they want to take away even that.
Did I miss something in the President's Report? Are we so dangerously close to dipping into our endowment that we must charge students to park out by the stadium?
Let's look at the facts:
* Rice has roughly 3,600 students.
* We also have a stadium that seats around 70,000 and parking to accommodate much of that.
* We have three to four operable buses for which no one asked (that I can recall) and on which precious few people ride.
* Each person who parked in the stadium lot for the Billy Joel/Elton John concert shelled out six bucks. (And to be completely frank, I should get free parking in the faculty lots for the inconvenience I have suffered because of concerts here.)
* Nineteen times out of 20 it is considerably faster for me to walk to the stadium lot from the Department of Geology and Geophysics.
* It is always faster for me to walk from the stadium lot to my office. (This point and the previous one presume, of course, the time lost walking to and from the stadium was to be eliminated by the buses, which may or may not be their actual purpose.)
* We have a budget problem, for which the only apparent solution is to make those parties not responsible pay.
Somehow, these facts do not jive. Yet each one is true, giving rise to a sense of unreality one usually associates with a George Orwell novel or perhaps an episode of "The Prisoner." But we have it here on campus thanks to a history of ill-fated and short-sighted efforts on the part of the administration to keep students from rioting.
Let us return to the glorious phase of Rice's past I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, during which people with cars were free ... free like the fishes in the sea (if fishes in the sea had cars they needed to park) and could park them pretty much anywhere but the faculty lots.
During this golden age, I parked in the lost lot of Atlantis (known to some as the SPAC lot) which was eventually covered by rising charges.
When this first round of heinous parking fees came to pass, there was a great gnashing of teeth. And lo, the graduate students did weep bitterly, and the commuting undergraduates were made to tear at their hair. But the administration spake unto us, saying that we should not wail, for the stadium lot would still be free.
Thus, the lazy and the sluggish among the faculty and staff were pleased with the new arrangement as they no longer would have their spaces stolen by industrious students. But consulting their oracle, the worried administrators saw that soon there would be trouble if they did not offer up the fatted calf to compensate those offended.
Alas, there was no calf fat enough to feed all the students, and of course there were the vegetarians to consider.
The administrators agreed that the compensation should be symbolic and expensive, to weigh heavily on the minds of everyone.
Ultimately, they could restrain themselves no longer.
A fleet of buses which would serve those relocated to the western realms was acquired, without concern for cost, practicality or aesthetics.
They were modern wonders, with air conditioning, cloth seats and doors that hiss.
Thus, the problem was solved ... or so they thought. Then the bills did come, and lo, they were mighty.
The administrators cowered in fear, shifting the blame to others.
But one among them who had been touched said, "It is because of these damned students we are in this mess. Let's make them pay."
Thus, it came to be that the Almighty Buck was passed. And there was great rejoicing.
There is a moral to this story. If the administration hadn't messed with the parking situation in the first place, none of this would have been necessary.
Or, for the physicists out there, fool with a system in equilibrium and it will definitely move toward entropy. For what it's worth, here's my four-step program program to solve this conundrum:
Sell back the buses!
Roll back the fees!
Damn the parking regulations!
Tempora Bona Volvant!
This item appeared in the Opinion section of the April 21, 1995 issue.
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