October 01, 2004

A Grand Design

Were someone to ask me to characterize two of the least discussed, yet most pursued goals of the University of California and especially the City of Berkeley, I would immediately suggest two equally sought after ideals: bureaucratic stagnation and the maximization of inconvenience. Although some naïve, gullible, or downright idiotic people might dismiss all the evidence supporting this conclusion as the negligible and undesirable side effects of an enormous organization, they would be wrong in doing so, not to mention incompetent and moronic.

The degree to which bureaucratic hindrances and outright inconveniences plague the campus community cannot be written off as a mere side effect. The obvious alternate conclusion, of course, is that these occurrences are part of a well thought out agenda - a grand design, if you will - geared to make our time at Cal as miserable as possible, perhaps originating from the highest echelons of the University hierarchy (ooh - conspiracy theory!). In the past, I have discussed the bureaucratic ineptitude that students encounter on a daily basis at length, so today, I'd like to focus on the inconvenience.

I will begin with a relatively minor inconvenience that I have wondered about for several years - in fact, every time scheduling time rolls around. Why doesn't TeleBears work during the night and on weekends? I mean, the last time I checked, it was a computer and computers don't need sleep. If my computer that runs rohitsrealm.com can be up for 6 months or more at a time, why can't a system supporting 30,000 students at least work after midnight? Wouldn't a lot of the angst that freshmen encounter trying desperately to get on TeleBears to sign up for Chem 3a or some shit be easily mitigated by simply letting a computer be a computer and up all the time? By the same token, why does BearFacts only accept address changes M-F 8am-5pm? It's a goddamn computer! Is there like a person who only works during the day on the other end who has to copy down my address change on a piece of paper and then input it manually in ANOTHER computer system? Seriously! What the hell! It makes no sense - it's simply intended to maximize inconvenience.

Speaking of inconvenience, have you been to Northside lately? Oh! That's right, you can't get there anymore, because they've sealed off the entire north end of campus to do more construction! Construction. Talk about inconvenience. There hasn't been a single day in the past four years I've been here that I haven't been inconvenienced by the senseless and unending construction. Remember when they closed off Sproul Plaza last year? Yeah. That was cute. But what really takes the cake is this: for the past two years, I've watched with incredulity as they dug and then filled in holes around Cory. Two years! Digging holes and then filling them back in! What!? What are you guys doing!? Time to bring out the backhoe and shut down half of campus, dig a big hole, and then fill it back up! IT MAKES NO SENSE! NONE! It's almost as if a five year old child with a bucket on the beach is planning our construction projects. Build something up. Tear it down. Build it up again. Except it's not sand - it's steal, concrete, billions of dollars, and hours of my time!

And those are only two of countless examples of inexplicable circumstances that only find meaning in the context that they are intended to make our lives as inconvenient as possible. Can anyone legitimately deny all this evidence? Clearly not! My only hope is that one day, that five year old kid decides that he doesn't like Evans anymore. No matter where in the world I am, I'm coming back to see them tear down Evans. That shithole of windowless misery needs to go. I hope they implode it! Now, that would be an inconvenience I'd actually enjoy!