University of Virginia Library

Colloquium

Give Us Back The Grounds!

By CHRIS DICKEY

—Ed.)

People never get their secret
wishes. If our innermost desires
were granted, Unicop tricycles
would be stranded in the middle of
winter on three flat tires. Their
bottom heavy riders, warmed by
the still crackling embers of the
former Department of Security,
would be forced to munch parking
tickets for their sustenance.
Automobiles, asphalt, and the fat
asses who are too lazy to walk
would be banned from campus with
a consequent 80 per cent reduction
of the faculty and a 100 per cent
elimination of the security forces.
Things wouldn't be changed much
for the students. They have to walk
every where anyway.

Why do the campus police, such
innocuous seeming nonentities,
inspire such malicious fantasies?
Why do they generate within us,
besides hatred, such profound
insecurity? Because they are
symbols, whether they realize it or
not, of the attitudes which every
year further depersonalize,
dehumanize, and degenerate this
university. Individually they are not
always so bad, but as a group they
are infrequently amiable, invariably
untalented, and occasionally
malicious.

For every one who gives you a
break, there are two or three who
have become quite crazed with
their sense of power. The advent of
women on campus has given them
further scope for self-assertion as
they inform freshly arrived coeds
that they better not park here, walk
there, or talk back like that or else.

Skulkers and Sulkers

The Unicops can be divided
roughly into two categories, the
skulkers and the stalkers. The
former variety waits, out of sight
around the bend, until you've
parked your car and gone on your
way to class. Then, the exhaust
note of their tricycles tuned down
as much as possible, they roll up to
your vehicle and with a clandestine
but assertive flourish stick that
little piece of paper beneath your
wiper.

The stalkers, on the other hand,
can be identified by their strong
resemblance to a strutting male
turkey who's somehow gotten
pregnant. This latter group could
teach the French gendarmerie a
thing or two about self-assertive
terror tactics as they walk the three
strides from their tricycles to the
windshield of your car with just the
hint of a goose step in their swagger.
You may occasionally see them
smiling contemptuously at students
pleading for clemency. I suggest we
make capes and black boots
optional parts of their uniform.

Lesson In Unavailability

These men have also been taking
lessons in
unavailability-when-wanted.
Their proficiency at not being
around when desired can be
attested to by the girl who was
recently molested on campus and
called the security department for
fifteen minutes before finally
realizing she was never going to get
an answer.

If you drive a car near this
University you're going to learn how
silly the University can be, and if
you try to park that car you'll find
out right away low far advanced
the cancer of regulations has
creeped. You learn that his whole
brick and bureaucratic institution,
which is sometimes laughingly
referred to as an "academical
village", is not organized for your
benefit, but to perpetuate and
facilitate the functions of the
administration and security
department: and that the functions
of those two closely related bodies
consist of little more than
self-preservation.

Psychedelic Map

We are told that having a car in
Charlottesville is a privilege, but the
housing situation near the grounds
is so expensive and deplorable that
for most of us a car is a necessity.

When we register our vehicles
we are given a little pamphlet which
enumerates the rules we shall have
to follow. There is a map in the
back of this thing. Done in
psychedelic and completely
confusing colors, the key says green
is the color designating student
parking. Yellow is for faculty and
staff. Blue is sometimes for
students or anyone else who wants
to park there. Scott stadium is blue,
and also a long ways away. Part of
its parking area is striped orange
and blue, but this coloration is not
explained. One searches amid the
the masses of orange near the
university for some hint of green.
One looks near student
health-surely sick students will be
allowed to park nearby, but, no,
the closest place is on the far side
of Mad Bowl.

Fineable Regulations

The only places where a student
may legally park on the grounds are
on the outermost periphery of the
campus. There were a few more
parking areas last year, but our
farsighted department of buildings
and grounds has put tremendous
piles of dirt on those.

A third of the fineable
regulations are simply to make
things easier for the Unicops. If you
fail to register, register improperly,
sell your car and don't tell the
Department, don't display your
decal or, heaven help us, put it on
the wrong side of your bumper or
next to an old decal, if you park
with the wrong side of your vehicle
next to the curb, or back into the
parking place so the cop will have
to get off his seat to check you out,
you are liable to get fined. None of
any of these rules have but the