Thursday, April 21, 2005

Collegiate Coaster Enthusiast Angered by Campus Policy

With the beautiful weather over the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions ushering the opening of the amusement park season, many enthusiasts have finally awoken, left the crack dens that they call home, and stopped checking their favorite news & rumors web sites every three seconds, in order to finally visit their favorite parks. Some -- the adventurous ones -- have even showered.

However, one enthusiast is unable to participate, due to a decision at his university to ban freshmen from having automobiles on campus. “This royally bites,” said Howie Roddick of Skidmark College in Philadelphia. “Now, I can’t go to [Six Flags] Great Adventure. I am just sooo close to getting the fix I need with a ride on the Great American Scream Machine, but those communist pigs don’t have the sense to allow me, and my fellow freshmen, to leave campus! Plus, it's educational! I learn all about...um, physics and stuff.”

When confronted with the fact that Skidmark does not have sufficient parking to accommodate the motor vehicles of its 1,500 undergraduate students, as well as its 375 faculty members, Roddick simply scoffed. “Come on, if I don’t like the fact that they’re showing third-run movies every month in the student center, I should be allowed the opportunity to leave campus and visit Great Adventure, where I can pay an exorbitant fee for parking my car in the hot sun, pay fifty bucks for a half-open park, get charged $2.50 for 20 ounces of Coca-Cola, gaze longingly at the inoperative Kingda Ka, and wade through untreated sewage when I use the bathroom! And hey! That teaches me about biology! Please! It’s not like I can do any of that here! If that isn’t an option to me, then why am I paying more than $35,000 to come here?” Roddick added that he is appalled at the college's refusal to provide a personal masseuse and the "shocking" absence of free iPods.

When asked about friends who would also be interested in a trip to Great Adventure that did have a car, Roddick was puzzled. “Friends? What the hell are those?”

--ETB