Chronicle columnists are out of touch with reality

Are most Duke undergraduates so out of touch with reality, or just those writing columns for the Sept. 4 issue of The Chronicle?

First, one complains about parking woes. She then details how she left home at 2 p.m. and arrived on campus (almost certainly by herself) by 2:06. Parking shortages are old news at Duke; if she lives close enough to campus to get here in six minutes, why drive at all? I spent last year living on Ninth Street and walked to West Campus most days. This year, I have moved too far away to walk, so I bike in.

One reason why Duke has such a parking crunch is that too many people who live near campus drive here alone. Walk! Bike! Carpool! Take a freakin' bus! The Bill of Rights did not include the right for every person to have their own parking space right next to their building. Get over it.

Then another columnist suggests that Duke build fountains. This, in the same issue with an article stating that we are still under stage III water restrictions due to this summer's drought.

Do these people even read the newspaper for which they write?

Finally, the second writer suggests that we need bullfrogs. Anyone with even superficial knowledge of this area knows that bullfrogs are quite common and widespread in North Carolina. In California, bullfrogs are an introduced pest species; they are not naturally found west of the Rocky Mountains. Transplanting them to California freed them of the predators and diseases that usually control their populations, so bullfrogs there are much bigger and more common than here and are causing numerous ecological problems. Maybe she'd like us to release Chinese Snakehead Fish; I'm sure they'd grow to be spectacularly big, health, and common.