I don’t know what is more inequitable: the fact that Loyola does little for the biking community, or that Loyola punishes bikers with somewhat unconstitutional means.
I have become a victim of Parking Services, and if you don’t mind your manners, you will too.
To start the reign of terror, Parking Services has implemented medieval rules to keep bikers in fear at all times. According to the Parking Services Regulations Handbook, “University Police officers will take bicycles found unsecured or secured to any structure other than a designated bicycle rack for safekeeping.”
To remove bicycles, University Police is allowed to remove the lock in whatever fashion they like (and for those who have U-locks, this means the destruction of the bike in general, in which they are not “responsible” for). Most times though, the process has been to simply put a second U-lock on the bike so that the riders cannot unlock it themselves; they then must go to Parking Services and pay five dollars to have it removed.
On the note of “designated bicycle rack,” Loyola has put little thought into this. To start off, there is a huge lack of bicycle racks on campus. Very limited bicycle racks are outside of Monroe Hall, allowing for two bicycles to lock to about eight racks, and these promise to rust if it happens to rain. The racks near Bobet Hall in the parking garage have permanently residing bicycles, making use impossible; the racks outside of the parking garage, again, promise rust. The racks between Biever Hall and Buddig Hall have reached maximum capacity with residents’ bicycles and that leaves nowhere to go except any available random post or bench.
As a resident of Cabra Hall, I feel the most cheated. The bike racks on the Broadway campus are squeezed between two buildings in a pit of mud. It is impossible, without a treacherous struggle, to lock your bike to any part of the rack except the end; so students must resort to locking it nearby on a pole or on the opposite side of a staircase. With this in mind and the fact that students at Cabra Hall actually need their bicycles to ride to class everyday, it is obviously unfair to even think about issuing a ticket to a locked bike, which is done with a bright orange “VIOLATION” sticker and a fat U-lock belonging to University Police.
Parking Services is ruining the sense of liberal arts that Loyola embraces. By implementing these preposterous rules, all value of environmental efficiency is lost. Students will never receive a liberal arts education when the school they attend doesn’t offer reasonable, efficient, even experimental services on which a school can function. Parking Services are faced with two options: changing these rules; or creating more dry bike space. Whichever path they take, I hope, should be a more efficient (and just) path.
