Every year, the University of Cincinnati welcomes another crop of budget-boosting freshman to campus. They do lots of nice things, like hosting picnics and other sweet events by the RAs (if there are many left who are NOT doing it just for the free rent, as was the case with my freshman RA). They also do other things which aren’t so nice, like arrange for Nazi-esque parking enforcement officials who do little more than turn the already busy move-in day into a knock-down drag-out battle for survival.
Parking is at a premium because we live near a city, which is a given. However, there are probably better ways to run move-in day than to try to enforce a fifteen minute limit on each person who is moving in. This is especially true given that it usually takes more than fifteen minutes of waiting just to get a cart to wheel your stuff up the hill (trust me, it’s necessary). This results in the commotion of trying to get all your stuff upstairs before the Parking Nazi has your car towed. Or so they would have you believe. The truth is, they couldn’t get a tow truck into most of these already jammed parking lanes if they paid him in donated organs.
The parking fiasco continues throughout the entire month before the actual move-in because of freshman orientation, which happens twice a week for WAY too long before school is in session. Given the size of the incoming freshman class, it seems a better idea to just let them all move in and THEN have the orientation. Better yet, just skip the whole thing entirely. Your average 18-year-old can probably use a map.
In truth, I’m just bitter because the parking fiasco overflows into my neighborhood, and these days it takes me about 15-20 minutes just to walk home after work from my parking space. Oh, to be able to walk or take the bus. These people are crazy. They jam the streets with their haphazard attempts at parallel parking (*Note to newcomers: yes, you DO need to be less than twelve inches from the curb lest you cause an accident. Again.). I got a space right in front of my house yesterday and almost cried from the sheer beauty of the moment. Seriously, people, go home. Freshman orientation is a waste anyways. It’s just another reason for people to take off work and drive all the way down to UC just to spend two days schmucking around without ever really becoming “oriented” to anything outside of the fact that their future home is in a really bad neighborhood.
That being said, welcome kids, and have a good time. I guess that the truth is closer to this: so many of the UC freshman are commuters that it only takes them fifteen minutes to drive down anyways. Then again, doesn’t this negate the need for orientation? I guess I can’t make a final judgement on this one. I have to go try to remember where I parked.
As you are neither a student nor employee of UC, could you be part of the problem?