New Rules

I was pretty disappointed to find out that there was no new Real Time with Bill Maher this week. One of my favorite Saturday morning routines is to listen to his show while I clean up the mess from the night before.

So in honor of Bill, and because imitation is the highest form of flattery, I came up with my own. So here goes:


New Rule: Just because you are in a study room does not give you the right to talk twice as loud as you would if you were outside. It's a study room, not outer space. We can still hear you outside. More importantly, we can still hear you in the next room over. And I don't care what you thought about last night's episode of gossip girl or what stupid comment that gunner in your class made today during lecture. It's almost finals time, I have to teach myself Con Law in 4 days, and most importantly, you're distracting me from my g-chatting.

New Rule: Before you revive a slogan from the American Revolution, you should probably read about the American Revolution. On tax day, hundreds of thousands of angry, conservative, non-colored citizens took to the streets chanting "No taxation without representation!", invoking the image of our 18th century forefathers who protested British rule over the original colonies. The only problem being, of course, that they do have representation. It's called the government, and they're representative because people voted for them to be there. No, not you individually, but guess what? It's called the United States of America, not the United States of Steve. Just because you didn't vote for him doesn't mean he doesn't represent you, genius. Hey, I didn't vote for Bush, either, but I didn't stop paying taxes and secede from the union just because Kerry lost. I did what any responsible American would do: I became apathetic.

Finally, New Rule: Whoever signed off on the city's plan to repave McAllister Street the week before finals should be publicly flogged. How anyone at either the ASUCH office or the Administration could have found out about this plan and NOT thought "Hm, that might be a bad idea," is beyond me. I can imagine the phone call went something like this:

City: "Hey so we want to repave McAllister street. We're thinking, late April, early May. Is that going to be a problem?"
UCH: "Um, lemme check my calendar...Hm...Late April.....Nope! Doesn't look like anything important goin on. Go right ahead."
City: "You sure? Cuz there's gonna be jackhammers, bulldozers, we're probably gonna block off the whole front entrance to the Tower."
UCH" "Yeah no, go right ahead. No problems here."
City: "Alright. Oh, and also, we were thinking about maybe increasing police presence around the campus. How's that sound?"
UCH: "Nah, don't bother. I think the students actually prefer the bum fights, car alarms, crack deals, and random drive-bys. We're bringing life to law, ya know!"


How do you NOT pick up on the fact that the City wants to do construction in front of your law school during FINALS?! Not to mention the fact that it's the end of the year and kids will be expecting to MOVE OUT of their apartments. It's going to be kind of hard to get a moving truck in front of the tower when there's, you know, NO STREET THERE. It's annoying to say the least - I certainly don't need any help NOT getting sleep in the tower. But it's frustrating more than anything. Being that UC Hastings has such a "special" relationship with the City in general (so many Hastings grads stick around to work here) and the Tenderloin specifically (we seem to be the only permanent residents in the neighborhood) it's unfathomable that the City would just be allowed to create such a huge disturbance at such a critical time of the year. More frustrating is the fact that it seems completely and totally unnecessary. It's not like McAllister was in such bad shape that it couldn't be driven on for another MONTH until finals were over and people were moved out. The whole operation could have easily been delayed until late May or June. Whoever the nitwit from UCH is that picked up the phone and told them this was all honky-dory should have known that, and should have told the City that if they want to waste more of our tax money, at least do it during the summer.

After all, how are all the bums supposed to sleep with all that racket?