Yesterday a friend and I drove into campus. Maybe he didn't look at the sign as long as he should have, but we left the car in a lot where students are not allowed to park and continued on our way. About 30 minutes later we returned to find an orange paper decorating the windshield and, after five miles of profanity on the way home, it suddenly occurred to me that we should be relieved; the university had finally found something it could do efficiently.

We attend the same university at which it takes three weeks to see an academic advisor and just as long to process a registrar's bill. We must compete in a lottery to live on campus in a dorm that, at least in my case, takes over three weeks to change the lock if your roommate loses her key. Security is also a problem. Twice I have lived in a dorm where girls on my floor were victimized and the response was an ineffective extension of card access hours.

But an illegally parked car, even on moving in and out days, will be ticketed in less than 20 minutes. It seems the university's priorities do not always to lie with managing student issues effectively but, instead, with enforcing its parking rules. If the rest of the university's departments functioned as smoothly as the parking mafia, perhaps we could live in a happier valley.