I don’t know about everyone else, but my winter vacation was entirely too short. I was uncomfortably thrown off by having just three weeks instead of four; a feeling enhanced by reading “Calvin and Hobbes” just before going to sleep and sighing in agreement when Calvin says, “There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want.” My goof-off time is precious, as I imagine it is to most students who aren’t frantically cranking out theses. Your parents breathing down your neck is a small price to pay for the brief time in which your only priorities are owning up to your brother’s challenge as to which of you can drink the most spiked eggnog and making it all the way through the 24-hour “A Christmas Story” marathon on TNT.

All time, be it spent slovenly or productively, is valuable. This fact is most painfully apparent to those unfortunates without cars who are obliged to use the most old-fashioned form of transport available: their own legs. Walking, in my opinion, is the most inefficient, wasteful way to get anywhere. The process of getting from point A to point B is made all the more tedious when it takes a lamentable eternity just to get to the end of the block. With all the modes of transportation technology has afforded us, walking should have been rendered obsolete long ago.

The great philosopher and confectioner extraordinaire Willy Wonka once said, “If the good lord had intended us to walk, he wouldn’t have invented roller skates.” Point taken. I could very well simply get a pair of roller skates and quit complaining. However, teachers tend to frown upon people who roll into class with clanking wheels and squealing brakes. Most lecture halls, I’m afraid, are ill-equipped to accommodate people on roller skates, and the lengthy process of taking skates off and putting them back on virtually nullifies the time saved by using them. Also, most pathways on campus are not entirely conducive to roller skates or even skateboards, being rather uneven and pebbled. About the only thing that makes sense to use, it seems, is a bicycle: a wonderfully efficient yet painfully expensive way to get places.

My dilemma is this: I have a perfectly functional bike but getting it from California to here is a hassle. Furthermore, attempts to find one used here have proven fruitless. And buying a new one is out of the question. This predicament, I’m sure, is shared with many students. Therefore I think the WU should implement a bicycle rental system.

Last year I visited a friend of mine at Davidson College just outside Charlotte, North Carolina. I noticed a number of things, the first being that my friend could step outside her dorm and practically be at class. Yet though the campus is miniscule, they have a system which piqued my interest. The college has a shed full of bikes on campus for student use. If you need a bike, you simply go and pick one up and leave it wherever. Granted such a system would never work here (a bike is worlds more likely to get stolen in St. Louis than in the tiny town of Davidson), but perhaps something similar could be designed. The process would have to be more formal, as theft is more likely at WU. Bikes could be rented on a weekly or monthly basis, since people would be less apt to use them during bad weather, and could include locks with the rental price. An insurance system could be developed, and a student-operated bike shop could open up more job positions.

Being car-less is a miserable state. A bike rental system, I feel, would vastly improve the welfare of the students, who are often deterred from going to class by the seemingly endless trek required to get there. A bike, in addition to helping work off alcohol calories, would keep more students in class.

Allison Carmichael is staff columnist
english
class of 2003
[email protected]

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