For the record, I would like it to be clear that even before the events described in this column took place, I was opposed to the “white card” system set up in Millbrook and other residential buildings around campus. Having to swipe into both your suite and your room using a card other than your student ID has always seemed both inconvenient and poorly conceived to me; add on the fact that all suite and room doors automatically lock, thanks to the expensive electronic gadgets inside, and in my opinion, you’ve got a pretty stupid system set up. My war against the white cards continued throughout first semester, as it would frequently take me six or seven swipes just to get into my suite, and then another four or five to get into my room. However, toward the end of first semester, I began to overcome my white card induced idiocy and got the hang of how to actually enter my apartment.
Sadly, my joy at being able to access my room in less than two minutes was short-lived. Over winter break, I received a bill from the University for $50. Why $50? I asked myself, just as you’re surely asking yourself now. Upon further review, it turned out to be because I locked myself out of my room. Twice. Now, some of you out there may think, “Those Forum editors must be perfect people. I bet they never, ever make mistakes.” By and large, of course, this is true, but even editors are real people, people who sometimes make mistakes. As you can tell, I made two last semester, and unfortunately, the cost for each is $25.
As I later found out, the real problem was not why I locked myself out, but when I locked myself out. If I had locked myself out during business hours, to re-enter my room would have cost merely $5, as opposed to the $25 demanded on nights and weekends. And so for one mistake on a Saturday and one on a Sunday, I’m down $50 to the house, even though each time I was locked out, all I had to do was call the campus police, who alerted the RA on duty at the time, who then let me into my room. While this may be an extensive and exhausting process, I’m still confused about why it should cost $25 a pop. Shouldn’t I get some sort of “first one free” deal? How about a “two for the price of one” agreement? Slapping on that $25 fee right away seems a little bit harsh, and needlessly so. It’s not like I was trying to lock myself out of my room, that I’m maliciously leaving my white card on my desk so that I can detract from the leisure time of the Milbrook RAs.
I understand that $50 isn’t the end of the world. But really, who needs this money more, the school that’s already making $40,000 off me every year, or me, a student, who could do more with $50 than our administration could probably do with $500? Here’s a short list of what I (or any student) could do with $50:
-Go out on a nice date.
-Go out on two cheap dates.
-Go out on three really, really cheap dates.
-Buy beer.
This is just a short list of the many, many things I could be doing with this money. Yet because of the long walks the RA on duty had to make to let me in my room, this money is being confiscated by the administration, so that in the future we can have more plasma screen TVs in the library and ugly sculptures set up around campus, in order to raise our ugly-sculptures to buildings-that-all-look-the-same ratio. This, of course, is a key component of the U.S. News and World Report rankings.
The truth of the matter is that I have no choice. As I’m hoping to graduate in May, it would be awfully embarrassing to have my whole family fly down to see me in all my cap and gown finery, only to be denied a diploma because of a moral stand against yet another goofy University policy. I will pay my $50, but I’ll make sure to learn from my two inadvertent lock-outs this past semester. If I forget my card in my room at night or over the weekend, I just won’t go back to my room until the Village Office is open again. I’m sure I can find a couch or a street corner somewhere, and I’ll save $20! That must be the solution the school had in mind when they instituted this policy, right?