Life > November 8, 2007

By Austin H. Jones | Staff columnist

I was walking back to Kitchin from Lot Q one day and just as I began crossing the Poteat Lot, a parking management officer told me from his car that I needed to go through Wait to get up to the Quad.

When I asked why he answered vaguely, “It’s for your own good,” and rolled his window back up.

The administration has repeatedly shown that it knows best what the students need, showing its concern for us by changing some intricate detail about every aspect of our lives.

Understanding that the average Wake student should be focusing on what is on the laptop and not the laptop itself, they buy our computers for us. Heaven forbid they make us shop for sleek-looking, better-performing, battery-functional and more efficient computers of our own.

They have been renovating the Quad on a regular yet seemingly infinite basis. Who knows how much time we would waste soaking up the sun (although much less efficiently than the admirable Sheryl Crow), playing Frisbee and football or lazing about in the shade of the double-rows of trees?

Turning to its culinary expertise, the administration has astutely increased the frequency of those oh-so-tasty (and high in fiber!) veggie burgers. And they purchased state-of-the-art dishwashing equipment which specializes in recycling the flavor of the past and incorporating it into the meals of the present. Mmm.

And the recent mysterious disappearance of trays from the Pit has most of us baffled. I’ve heard rumors they are using the trays to fend off ninjas that keep trying to steal the Fro-Yo machines. Yes, I just called it Fro-Yo. No, I am not a spoiled, white, 18-20-something suburbanite girl.

Putting questions of my gender aside, I think I’m on to something when I say that the administration has been on a perpetual power trip since 1834.

Upperclassmen, think back to freshman year when the administration dangled the Collins lot right under our noses, taunting us even more by forcing us to park so painfully far away from south campus. Every $40 ticket merely reaffirms the administration’s utter control over our lives here at Wake.

But you can stick it to the man.

Leave your car in a faculty spot as long as possible. Professors are always trying to get to campus early and grab those valuable spots right outside the dorms. Even if it means waking up at 7 a.m. when you don’t have a class until 11 a.m., you will be victorious. And every little victory counts in this war.

On weekends, wake up early and get breakfast, stay in the Pit until the end of brunch and get lunch too. Also, on weekdays around 11:50 a.m. there is a massive influx of fresh Pitters that I once heard some of my second-tier friends call “The Amoeba” because of the tendency of these diners to clump and move together.

One time I saw The Amoeba’s equivalent of phagocytosis: a branch from the Grill ferociously looped around an unsuspecting freshman who was leaving one of the high tables to get an M&M cookie. He let out a barely perceptible scream, dampened by the deafening roar of the Amoeba, as he fell to the floor, crushed by the feet of the hungry.

Needless to say, I never saw him again. Resisting The Amoeba will not physically aid us in the War against the Administration. It is merely a symbol of the terrorizing, oppressive authority under which we live, study and die.

Resistance is a noble cause.

Embrace it. Love it. Live it.