In some of my earliest posts here, I would talk about the banal subject of campus parking. While I think this topic is of little consequence, others around here take it as seriously as a heart attack. In the past, I mentioned the line-painting incident and the parking proposals suggested by our faculty senate.

I have sarcastically ranted about how parking is paramount on this campus. To be clear, if somebody has accommodations that require them to park close to a building, I understand entirely. Some people need a little extra to guarantee their access to our facilities. However, what this campus is doing now is no longer on the verge of the absurd. We have successfully planted our brain-dead flag in the ground, proclaiming our ineptitude as a faculty.

At the start of this semester, the safety patrol began placing safety cones in the parking area where the majority of the faculty have offices and teach classes, declaring to students that parking their hoopties there is forbidden. That is all fine and good, I guess. Why nobody made signage is something that I will never know. I say this because the safety people blocked the faculty parking entrances with cones. I am not talking about one or two clones denying access to the lots. I suppose that would be okay if I were not thinking about it. Safety placed a bunch of cones at each entry, forming a chain to look like the bottom set of teeth on a wild animal.

Apparently, the number of cones was so preposterous that the faculty, again, complained about our parking situation at the first faculty meeting of the semester. By their accounts, these people with advanced degrees did not know what to do and sat in the street, panicking about where they would park. Really? Is this something my peers at Romulus cannot comprehend? The parking lot does not appear visibly altered in any way. Aside from a collection of cone cluttering up the place, I don’t see why this was an issue. If there were signs of resurfacing or fresh paint, I might see an argument here. No. I have faculty who are paralyzed by the placement of cones, like a stressed-out snail surrounded by salt.

I wasn’t even aware of this problem because I park on the south side of campus, where there is ample parking. Throw in the fact that I arrive on campus at sunrise, and I have my pick of any spot I want. If I were in that situation and noticed that nothing had improved or that there was no caution tape, I would get out of my vehicle, move the cones, and drive to my spot. Call me an anarchist. A couple of faculty members decided to drive over the cones to get their spots, dragging them under their cars.

Sometimes I wonder how some people manage to make it to work every morning because the logic they use has all the sense of those early GPS systems that would drive you off a cliff if you did everything they said. Why didn’t any faculty member call the safety office to clarify? These brilliant minds could avoid calamity with a simple phone call. I swear, if my people can’t handle parking cones, how are they dealing with this new generation of students who rely on smartphones and ChatGPT?