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I will be the first to tell you that the bicycle registration system is flawed. A bike is a bike is a bike, so why one would need to register it with Campus Safety is beyond me. Does it make a difference whether a student’s bike is registered or not? Beyond preventing a bike parking ticket, not in the slightest. If a student doesn’t register his bike, he is not causing a safety breach to the DU campus. So why then should Campus Safety be issuing tickets for unregistered bikes?

As students, we are encouraged to register other valuable items with Campus Safety. If we park in a campus parking lot, we must register our car before being issued a parking permit. That one is simple. But you can register others items with the Campus Safety office, too: a cell phone, a laptop, a digital camera – anything that holds personal value to you as a student.

So if these are all items that must be registered in the same vein that a bike does, why isn’t Campus Safety also focusing its efforts on issuing tickets for cell phones left unsecured on a classroom desk? Or for laptops left on chairs in the Driscoll Underground? Or for iPods that sit on the locker room countertop in the Coors Fitness Center?

I am further baffled by Campus Safety’s enforcement of these bike parking rules. According to a citation I received almost two weeks ago outside of the Mass Comm building, I had failed to place my U-Lock properly around the bike frame to secure it to the bike rack. Instead, I had locked the front wheel to the rack because that’s all there was room for.

My bike was impounded. Campus Safety had placed another, obnoxiously orange U-Lock on the actual bike frame, and if I were to get my bike back, I had to call and deal with the dispatcher over the phone. Subsequently, I was late to class in the Daniels College of Business, about a 10-minute walk from Mass Comm, because I had failed to lock my bike correctly. I’d imagine the other two bicyclists that were impounded faced the same fate. If I had intended to be late to class, I wouldn’t have ridden my bike in the first place. After all, do you think my professor was going to buy the My bike was impounded “excuse?” No. It was just too bogus to be true.

In checking the Campus Safety bike regulations online, reference to U-Lock-to-bike-frame policy is as follows: “The only style of bicycle lock approved by the University of Denver is a U-Lock. Bicycles must be secured in a manner in which the bicycle frame and front wheel (if possible) is secured to a bicycle rack.” Now correct me if I’m wrong, but “if possible,” despite being in parentheses, means just that: if possible. I wasn’t able to secure my bike properly to the bike rack because, like those other two bicyclists, it wasn’t possible due to space and rack limitations.

Until the office of Campus Safety is able to add more bike racks to the many different bicycle parking locations on campus – the two new ones at Driscoll North are not enough  – consider securing your bike properly anything but possible.  And prepare to make that call to the Campus Safety office, begging them to release your bike so you can get to your noon class.