Chained to the rack

I ride a bike and I live in the dorms. When I arrived home from class last week, I saw a little old lady standing amid the bike racks, sticking orange stickers in the spokes of the bikes' wheels. As a freshman, I had no idea what was going on, so once she left I appropriated one of these stickers, wondering what the deal was. I found out, and it's pretty ridiculous. \nAccording to these stickers, IU has several policies for bikes that I'd never heard before. First, bikes can be chained only to a bike rack. Trees, lampposts and "any passageway which might by used by emergency or service equipment, wheelchairs or pedestrians" are all off limits. In addition, any bike left unattended for more than a week will be considered "abandoned." Lastly, bicycles must be "registered with parking operations and display a valid permit." Whoa. \nI wasn't aware that there was a widespread bicycle-parking problem on campus. Were you? I haven't seen any pedestrians, handicapped people or emergency or service equipment incapable of getting somewhere because of a bike parked in their paths. Have you? I ride my bike virtually every day and can assure you that while bike racks can sometimes be a little bit packed, I've always been able to park my bike. \nI walk every day and I've never been unable to get some place because of a bike chained to a lamppost in the middle of the sidewalk. If I had, I'd be more concerned about the lamppost than the bike. So, what exactly is IU doing?\nMaking money, of course. Any IU student or faculty can tell you that any claims of bike parking pandemonium are hogwash. By creating mandatory bike permits, IU has simply found a way to wheedle another five bucks out of a portion of the student population, without needing to say that they raised tuition by a dollar. The silliest part of this system, though, is that these rules are not new regulations on campus.\nA Parking Operations employee said they have required bike permits for at least five years, but by his description, enforcement was pretty lax. With hundreds of illegally parked and/or permit-less bikes on campus, he said Parking Operations pretty much just tags bikes at the end of the year "to remind (students) to take them home," instead of impounding them, as the rules say. According to him, most of the bikes that are actually impounded have owners who didn't take the hint and left them here during the summer. \nSo why, exactly, does IU bother having rules on the books if the University doesn't enforce them? Probably so that when an entering freshman hears that they need a permit and buys one, the University can net an easy $5. To be sure, the idea of regulating bike parking could be a good thing, provided it was designed to actually help the student populace in some way. \nI'd be happy to pay $5 more in tuition for a service that checks bike racks daily for those bikes with missing wheels or chains. These inoperative bikes tend to sit for long periods of time and take up space for the rest of the students trying to park. If a system like this were in place, maybe fewer bikes would be chained to trees as riders move into the new bike rack spaces.\nAs it is, the bike parking scheme in place is overly stringent, yet simultaneously unenforced and a waste of paper and time. So next year, when you hear freshmen asking about bike permits, be sure to let them know how they're in no way necessary, and help keep IU from making money off meaningless paper.