I go to a university that's making a big green push -- we'll call it the University of Derp. (Some of you know where I go, please don't say the name in public, kthx). The University of Derp has built all sorts of new eco-friendly buildings and put forward excellent initiatives to reduce its impact on the environment and make a positive impact on the world. One of these initiatives is transportation. We have a mass transit system on campus, to get our tens of thousands of students from the dorms to the classes, and between classes. It's great, it's convenient, it's heavily used and it actually helps with safety (so you don't have to walk home in the dark).
This week, they rolled out a bicycle program to compliment the bus system. We'll call this initiative DerpBikes. It models the bicycle programs of other universities. They throw together a few hundred ugly bikes, assemble bike racks across campus, and paint bike lanes on the roads. You go to a bike rack, get the bike, ride to where you need to go, and drop the bike off at the bike rack. Simple, efficient, mostly safe, and excellent on the environment.
Right? Well, yes, but the University of Derp found a way to fuck it up.
You see, the fatal flaw with our program is that the other campuses have things called "security measures." Fascinating idea, huh? You swipe your student ID card, it releases the bike, and if you don't return it to a rack, they charge you. They put little tracking chips in the bikes to make sure if you ride to the strip club downtown you'll get charged for the bike. They do all these things to prevent theft, damage and other stupid stuff college students can figure out.
What does University of Derp do? Write "University of Derp" on the bikes, and put them in the racks. End of story. Ohhhh yeah, that turned out well.
In just six days, most of the bikes are broken or parted out. Half of them are missing -- some stored in dorms to ensure they get a bike and nobody else can take it, some have been returned to the campus by City Police after being found miles away downtown (where they shouldn't be), and the rest are just plain missing. The ones that are left over are pieces of crap. It's a miracle if you can find one, and as you're riding you have to hope that A) the handlebars don't flip down and B) the brakes don't give out as they have been doing (both of which happened to me today, but I digress...).
Sweet, huh? So in six days, our green initiative turned into a theft-'n'-break-a-thon. The moral of this story is that if you're going to do something to help the environment, don't do it on the honor system. Either that, or a bunch of dumbass thieves and careless jerks thwarted university administration's plans to put us under UN control.
Damn kids. Dagnabit, get off my lawn.
But seriously, how the hell did they not foresee this?