Summer is just around the corner and the gym is full of idiots. While the football and futbol players count the days till the start of next season, girls sit on the stationary bikes and pedal at Lance Armstrong’s pace sans steroids and pre-cancer (before he got motivated), or, alternatively, about as slow and frustrating as ResLife housing selection. If you really want to trim that waistline (so that your figure will match your attractive personality), avoid using The Ride and walk it out, as Andre 3000 suggests.
Wesleyan has an extremely environmentally conscious population, one of the largest green constituencies of any college in the northeast, I bet. There are people on this campus who don’t wipe for fear of wasting paper, and don’t wipe with their bare hands because they don’t want to waste water while scrubbing the brown from beneath their fingernails. But in my three years here, there has not been one individual (maybe there has, I don’t know) to protest the environmental efficiency of The Ride.
For those of you who don’t leave your computers for fear of missing the next thought-provoking post on the anonymous confession board, The Ride is a system of several vans which drive in circles around campus every night of the week. The Ride exists (for the most part) so that lazy and chubby drunk people on this campus can go to parties and get drunker without having to burn a few calories (and depending on your fitness) break a sweat while walking. If The Ride isn’t being used, can it be that poor eating habits and slow metabolism are the reasons there are more love-handles than books in Olin?
When I was a kid, I had to walk three miles to and from school in sleet, snow, rain, or shine. Now The Ride will pick you up from your depressing dorm room and either bring you to a more depressing house or frat (which is also a house) party, or a kind individual (who has a problem with you riding with an alcoholic beverage) will take you down to the hustle and bustle that is Main Street Middletown on a Wednesday night.
Just as I acknowledge that skateboarding is a terrible mode of transportation (and that watching someone skateboard uphill is hilarious), I see The Ride as being detrimental to our planet earth (not the 11 part mini-series). As the empty Chevy Astros circle and cut through campus, dangerous greenhouse gasses are being emitted into our precious atmosphere, weakening the ozone layer and helping idiots from my high school get tanner, easier. Just like Public Safety’s Ford Crown Victorias, these vehicles run on gasoline and not e85 ethanol or biodiesel, forcing Wesleyan to buy gallons of fuel and funding some Saudi Prince’s purchase of motorcycles for each of his twelve sons (assuming we’re filling up at Shell). We don’t know for sure, but that prince may also be into philanthropy, donating money to Boy-Scout-like organizations that like to play hide and go seek in the cavernous mountains of Afghanistan…and you thought that Wesleyan’s investing in Raytheon was bad?
Public Safety is clearly a necessity on campus (I need someone to whom I can report incidents of chalking) but do they need to be in cars? If I get mauled by a hoard of opinionated feminists after saying the “C” word on the hill, would a PSafe officer be able to respond quicker by driving from High Street than if they were nearby on foot patrol? I acknowledge that the situation is contingent on someone actually reporting this hypothetical incident of hate, but would Officer Party-Pooper be able to save me before my musk turned this battery charge into sexual assault?
While Public Safety may be better able to protect (sidewalks) and serve (themselves) in automobiles than in rollerblades, The Ride is to the Wesleyan community as anal sex is to procreation—a useless, conceptually strange, but sometimes enjoyable novelty.
The University spends a ridiculous amount of money annually on these vehicles and their drivers. Although I enjoy riding with some of these people to hear stories of what it’s like to be nocturnal and on parole, these funds could easily be spent on efforts to save a rainforest, relief for the African AIDS epidemic, or more importantly, Spring Fling. Sure I’m a proponent of injecting money into the Middletown community, but I would much rather spend a classless day in May listening to the fierce but melodic sounds of DMX, followed by the fierce but melodic sounds of Meat Loaf, after a sexually ambiguous opening act from 4 Non Blondes.
It’s true that we had Cee Lo perform as the main act in 2005, but it’s also true that you didn’t tell people that and/or know who he was until you heard Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” playing on 97X (baaaaam, the future of rock and roll) last spring. It’s also true that last year, after following a chaotically exciting performance by Andrew W.K., Talib Kweli came, saw, and left after 20 minutes. And as Project Pat, who’s primarily known for his role in Three 6 Mafia, has only two songs on his myspace page (one of which is titled “Good Googly Moogly”), one can’t help but consider the potential length and quality of his performance.
Following Project Pat will be TV On The Radio, who rock hard (but not as hard as the Loaf). Their performance is expected to be the best of the day, as the group is beginning to gain widespread acclaim and is probably getting as much sexual attention as Any Dufresne did in “The Shawshank Redemption.” Although we won’t be touched by Meat Loaf’s lyrical narratives or enlightened by Earl Simmons’ thoughts on both the war in Iraq and hitting it from the back, the $60k darty (day party) known as Spring Fling should be a good Wednesday at college as long as Project Pat remembers his grill and doesn’t get pulled over by Middletown PD, and TVOTR doesn’t get swarmed by networking Eclectic members.
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