UMass Signage Department

Pointless signs have been popping up around campus. Take for example the “No stopping any time” signs that were put around the drop off area in front of the Campus Center over the summer. Are people supposed to jump out of moving cars as their ride coasts by the Campus Center? We witness everyone and their mother doing it. Pulling up on the right, shutting off the car, and dashing inside for something. Someone working in the UMB administration clearly has new policies in mind, such as parking control and no one is enforcing them. We’re not appealing to justice. We don’t want people to be ticketed in the only designated drop off area on campus. But we’d like to see a little consistency and sanity in our surroundings. Why the intentionally paradoxical signs? They say keep going, in an area where everyone pulls in to park. Imagine if they put signs in the cell phone lot at the airport that say, “Keep Moving” and everyone drove around with phones on their ear as the police shoo them along running over pedestrians and their luggage. There was no need to waste the money on these signs. The contradictions abound one if you truly look around campus. It’s kind of jarring to have to smoke your cigarettes next to the no smoking signs placed directly above every ashtray on campus. What kind of logic is this? Where are the ashtrays in smoking areas? Where are the smoking areas on campus? Quit messing with our smoke-loving minority! The only written tidbit about the campus smoking policy can be found in the “Code of Student Conduct” on the umb.edu website where a “violation of the campus smoking policy” is listed as a violation. It’s hard to associate any level of value with this “violation,” because it’s hard to imagine one of the hundreds of smokers on campus actually being expelled for leaning against one of the campus buildings while smoking. Has anyone else noticed, on the right of the crosswalk between Fox Point and Wheatley, the large sign marked “No Stopping”? Is there not a huge problem with simultaneously encouraging pedestrians to cross and motorists to not stop? Going to school at an urban institution is already far riskier then keggers on a farm in western Mass…must they increase our odds of death by traffic? We must do something to stop these administrative sign makers before they get any more out of control.