When riding my bike across Library Mall a few weeks ago, to my welcome surprise, I heard an amiable female voice warmly beckoning "Hey," in my direction. Tip-toeing the fine line between too assertive a response and too apathetic a reaction to this gesture, I coolly waited approximately half a second, pulled a quarter-turn of my head, made eye-contact (with an appropriately dispassionate smile, I might add) and offered the sort of wave your neighbor might display as you pull out of your driveway.
Suffice it to say I had presented the perfect retort to this welcoming provocation.
Contentedly continuing my course, I began to notice what a beautiful day it was, how nicely the weather was shaping up and many other pleasant things that had eluded me when I had frantically hopped on my bike with hopes of arriving to my first morning lecture at a point no later than 10 minutes after its inception.
Before long, I encountered a scene far less welcoming than that which had preceded it. Standing unhappily next to a bike was a student apparently receiving a ticket from a police officer. How had I forgotten? There was word on the street that the local police had recently vowed tougher restrictions on bicycling, including a prohibition of the act altogether on Library Mall.
Damnation! The assumptions I made about my recent rendezvous were erroneous. The exchange I had understood as one of warm pleasantries turned out to be little more than a warning for the upcoming threat to my finances! Well, at least a good deed had been done in my favor, in spite of my inability to comprehend it.
But what of this police crackdown on biking? I would like to consider myself to be at least somewhat on top of current events (I major in journalism, I work for the newspaper, my hobby is reading the newspaper and the duties of my internship consist mostly of perusing headlines), and, to my knowledge, Madison has recently experienced a rash of batteries, assaults, robberies, rapes and the like. In fact, violent crime has become so critical an issue that the University of Wisconsin's administration has been forced to step to the forefront in addressing it.
At Chancellor John Wiley's convocation this year, the speech made by interim Dean of Students Lori Berquam was dominated by warnings of an increasingly violent downtown atmosphere and advice about how to keep safe. Emphasized were the availability of UW's Safewalk and Saferide programs — personal security guards, of sorts, deployed to compensate for the shortcomings of law enforcement in ensuring the safety of students.
Why, then, are police resources being so badly squandered in what is essentially a declaration of open season on Madison bicyclists?
Have bikes become that big a problem in this city? As Madison's downtown environment has deteriorated to the extent of halting the casual evening stroll, the local cops have become hell bent on setting in motion a comprehensive plan to halt the two-wheeled, 15 mile-per-hour menace they perceive as detrimental to the city's welfare. Perhaps a patrol unit ought to be dedicated to citing those joggers who traverse campus at speeds higher than a trot.
If police are wondering why they're so often looked upon unfavorably, let this be their example. Maybe — after realizing that most students know both someone who's been assaulted as well as someone who's been "pulled over" while riding a bike — police would reorder their priorities. Maybe if police figured out that the populace is concerned more about battery than about minor speeding violations, concerned more about armed robbery than about loitering and concerned more about rape than about a few kids smoking pot, the community would be a lot safer.
Maybe the police ought to first focus on ensuring students can walk safely home from the library before they focus on students who choose to take that trip on a bike.
And maybe all of this will put an end to the kind of trickery recently suffered by my ego.
Rob Rossmeissl ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in journalism and political science.
