Well. I guess this is the first post on the blog….cool, I beat Scott for the honor. Anyway…I suppose this is introduction time. Hi. I’m Nicole. I’m a sophomore Communication/Journalism major and English writing minor, and I’m the Assistant News Editor for the Courier this semester. I’m from Rochester, and I think anyone who lives here for any length of time needs to visit Java’s downtown and go to WinterFest at Charlotte Beach at least once. I love anything and everything having to do with horses; I follow racing religiously, work at a therapeutic riding center for little kids, once jumped cross country on a runaway ex-racehorse, and I volunteer every summer at the Stuart Horse Trials, where US Olympian Darren Chiacchia will probably file a restraining order against me someday. I like Broadway musicals, and if you are friends with me (or live within earshot in Dorsey), you probably have heard "Defying Gravity" at least once. I’m happy when I’m crazy busy; according to my roommate, I "always go 60 miles an hour when you only need to go about ten." Speaking of my roommate, she’s a Comm major, too; she is into the broadcasting field and is one of the analysts on Fisher Sports Desk (although she doesn’t have a blog. So clearly, she’s not as cool as me).
So, I’m really not sure what to write about. Yesterday we were all in the Courier office putting the newspaper together, and Craig, the online editor, went "Hey, who wants to blog for the website?" and I went "Cool, give me something to do." Like I said, I’m happy being productive. So, since I’m not sure what to put in here, I suppose I’ll just write about what happened to me this morning….or more specifically, what happened to my car last night.
I didn’t have a car on campus until this semester. When I went to the Security desk to get my parking permit on the day we moved back in for the Spring semester, they told me that all the spots in the Dorsey lot were full, and gave me the choice of parking in the Murphy lot across the street, or parking in Park & Ride. Since there were some problems with cars being broken into in Park & Ride earlier this year, and since I’d like to have four tires and a CD player at the end of this semester, I opted for Murphy. Walking never hurt anyone.
This morning, I got up, got ready for work, and walked out to the Murphy lot. I started to brush the snow off the car, and hmm….something’s not right here. Then I realized that there was a scrape down the side of the door. Hmm, I don’t think that was there before. Then I realized that the passenger side windshield wiper blade was pulled off and dangling uselessly. So by that point, I was beginning to get angry. Walking around to the other side of the car, I found the booby trap—the broken beer bottle, no doubt the cause of the scrape, sitting directly behind my tire. Aha.
So, the current theory is that whoever messed with my car was having a little fun and still buzzed. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not morally opposed or anything to drinking, but there’s a point when you cross the line from harmless fun to not-so-harmless and downright troublesome. Peeing next to the driver’s side door (yes, they did that, too), even if it is a little disgusting, is a harmless prank. Actually breaking things and messing with someone else’s property is not a harmless prank. I don’t mind other people’s habits, unless it begins to inconvenience me. And being late to work because it was snowing this morning and I had to try to fix the wiper blade in order to drive there safely counts as a pretty big inconvenience. Paying to get the wiper fixed is going to be a pretty big inconvenience. People really need to grow up and learn how to control themselves and have some respect for others.
The response from security infuriates me as well. I visited them today to report the situation and ask if anything could be done about it. They apologized for the incident, then told me that given the environment I had brought my car into, these sort of things happen sometimes. According to them, Fisher is much safer than other campuses. And according to them, they are not responsible for what happened. I was sort of expecting that response. So then I asked if there were cameras in the lot, and if it was possible to find the culprit and maybe have them pay for damages? The response: "Well. Maybe. We’ll check the tapes. It could take awhile to find someone."
Excuse me? I do understand that I have a certain level of responsibility for my own car, and hey, that’s fine with me. It’s no different than parking in the lot by my old high school by the city (where I came out of the building once and found a flat tire). But Security is here to protect us, as students who are paying to study and live on campus. If they have the means to do anything about it, even if it’s just trying to find the person after the fact, they need to do it immediately—not in "awhile." Maybe they’ll care about it when the same person, or someone else, is wandering campus intoxicated and decides to break a window or better yet, vandalize a Security van. If it’s something that directly impacts them, maybe they’ll choose to begin taking action.
In the meantime….it is Rochester, it is January, it snows frequently, in case Security didn’t notice. I can’t really wait "awhile" to have the wiper blade fixed so I can drive safely. So I’m going to have that fixed myself and worry about finding whoever did it later. In all likelihood, it’s a lost cause.
So. Anyway. That’s my rant for the day. Maybe it made you think about the state of things on campus, maybe you ran out to check on your own car, or maybe you at least got some amusement out of my predicament. Anyway, I hope you got something out of it. Thanks for visiting the website, and be sure to keep checking it out; it’s cool, and they (Craig, John, and Mary) have been working really hard on it. And this whole blogging thing could get interesting (I hereby challenge everyone else to a Super Bowl blog face-off). Also, don’t forget to pick up the print edition of the Courier—our first edition of the semester hits newsstands around campus tomorrow!
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