Missed Connections

Back when I was a "traditional" student, the beginning of each school term meant tedious visits to a range of administrative offices - the registrar, the bursar, financial aid and campus security.

Deep in the 21st century, registration and finance are handled via our modern electronic media, including the wondrous Fax Machine. (I am poking fun at low-tech community college - But still! This is more technology than the old days of registering by 'automated' phone system, or paying tuition in person!)

This year, a personal, in-the-flesh trip to the Campus Security office is still required for the acquisition of a student I.D., which my new school refers to bizarrely as a "Colleague I.D." (I pray that is not merely a pervasive misspelling of College.) Campus Security also confers a parking tag during the same visit, a gesture of noteworthy efficiency, in my opinion.



The staffs of these various offices serve of course as gatekeepers of the institution, but I have found with pleasant regularity that they treat their jobs with good humor and kindness. I always try to put my best foot forward as if "being in good" with these folks will smooth out the troublesome dimensions of going to school.

Yet, aside from one very brief visit at the beginning of each term, you never see them. They don't remember you, nor the forms you completed legibly and accurately on your first attempt. You scarcely remember them unless they had particularly funny voices or a shrine to Denzel Washington made of decoupaged magazine photos. (That exists in Chicago!)

There is no bonding.

After a few days of snapping pictures, laminating I.D. cards, and entering license plate numbers into an ancient computer terminal, they turn their attention to the more or less urgent matters of every day, just as you do. This causes me a certain melancholy. A friendship never had the chance to blossom.

At the community college campus security office they were pushing lanyards more aggressively than last year's Saturns. Evidently, it is a new school policy that all Colleagues must wear their I.D. cards visibly at all times while on campus, though I don't think they have considered the possibility of a student getting it caught in the wide-belt sander or the lathe.