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Date:         Sat, 12 Sep 1992 12:58:46 -0500
From:         ANTHLAL@UMNACVX.BITNET
Subject: getting blood from a turnip: an answer to kerry s.

hi-ho, kerryrino, here's the scoop on how the home of the fightin'
golden gophers handles library fines:
you pay them, or you can't do anything, like have a computer account
(which, incidentally, you get to pay for yourself), or enroll, or
graduate, or any of that good stuff.  you can withdraw books (so that
you a) look busy when your advisor comes by your desk and b) have
something to dust, organize, and reorganize instead of actually working
on your dissertation) for 13 weeks at a time.  of course, by the time you
have had books for 13 weeks, you start to forget when exactly you got them,

and what exactly you ever did without them, and after 13 weeks have past, you're
    kind of now getting up the nerve to actually read them and pull quotes
out of 'em.  it is at this approximate time that you realize "hey.  like,
these might actually be due some time soon."  this, however, is impossible
to check without actually taking the books in, because everything is
computerized and they no longer give you one of those little cards in
the back that says "due 16 december":  they give you a little bitty
piece of paper that you of course either jammed into your purse or
into the front of the book, and later used it to write down dave's
address in washington or maybe a recipe for cheese grits when you had
your mom on the phone or possibly you had to get out some tension
during a phone conversation so you drew a physicist with horns and a
tail and a pitchfork on it and then tore it up into little pieces.  so
you go back to the library and sheepishly ask if maybe you have some library
fines, and then they tell you "yep."  and then you go to the back of the
line because your turn is up and reformulate the question for these
taciturn delights, and say "tell me how much i owe in library fines."
they look it up, and then they say, if you are one laura anneliese lorson,
"you owe us $274.23.  pay at the bursar's."  so you go to the head of
collections (?) and you say "but i'm a *graduate* student!  i need them for
more than 13 weeks at a time (n.b.:  try not to laugh when you say that)."
so then you ask if there is not some way *around* this astronomical sum,
if it can'
t (oops) be waived or something if you promise, really really really, that
you won't ever do it again, and surely there is some sort of contingency
plan, and well, can't it be worked out if i bring cookies and can get
you into glam slam?  and the answer will be a resounding no.  so you
register for a library card in your middle name and give your oh-so-
coincidentally new address, and when they ask if you are related to that
other lorson who owes a buncha money, say it's your sister, and isn't
she just the most irresponsible thing ever?  and go and check out all
the same books you just hauled all over hell and half of texas out to the
library so the fines would stop accruing.  begin again.
which reminds me...i think it might be about 13 weeks or so since...naaaaaah.

the political part of this posting, you bandwidth police?  well, right
here:  big universities exist in order to make money.  i happen to attend
the biggest of them all.  love it, *love* it.  you don't pay, you don't
play.  no exceptions.  education, yeah, right.

gotta go before they get a fix on me....
                                                  * * *liese
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