I was still angry about the bike ban. I decided to leave President Hennessy three notes a day. I’d tear out a piece of binder paper, jot a little anti-bike-ban screed and slip it under his door. Plus I sent him regular emails. Occasionally, I asked him what his favorite flavor of ice cream was. I thought I’d charm the secretaries who delete Hennessy’s junk mail.

Then I got an email from Dean of Students Maureen Powers. She wanted to meet with me. Powers is new to Stanford. Last month she told The Daily, “Stanford has a tradition of involving students with decision making, and I hope to ... always keep students at the forefront of the decision-making process.” That is quite a thing to say, and she was upholding her promise by talking to me.

She explained why the ban was created. A Pedestrian Review Group installed it for two reasons: 1) significant egress concerns, with the preponderance of parked bikes blocking emergency exit zones and causing lots of “bumps and scratches,” and 2) concerns for “people with accessibility issues.”

I asked her who was on the Pedestrian Review Group and what kind of research they had conducted. I asked her exactly how often people were injured. “All the time,” she said, repeating “bumps and scratches.” She indicated that people were walking into parked bikes, which is frankly impossible to imagine in the physical universe we inhabit.

In fact, Powers admitted that she found the security argument less convincing than the issue of increasing accessibility for people with accessibility issues. In my experience, bikers tend to give more leeway to people with such difficulties. Apparently, there were too many bikes parked in the arcades, and these people could not get through. How many bikes were there? She did not know. She threw out the number “400 or 800,” which is not exactly precise. Her arguments made sense, but where were the facts? Where was the research?

I asked for something concrete — complaints, statistics, the numbers of people with accessibility issues, anything that actually happened to directly motivate the ban. She asked me, “Darren, if even one person with accessibility problems has more accessibility now, isn’t that enough?”

I didn’t say this to Powers, because she is a smart woman and she offered me a bagel, but that has to be the biggest load of horse shit I have ever heard. It is not an argument, it’s a U2 song. She was talking down to me, which is not uncommon for our administrators.

Follow this “even one person” argument, and you reach absurdity. If even one person bikes across grass and trips over unsteady ground, will we have security monitoring all the grass? If even one person climbs on the Claw, falls off, and breaks his leg, will there be security preventing all fountain hopping that isn’t an Absolute Fun event? Sound ludicrous? The bike ban sounded just as ludicrous in May.

I decided to try pragmatism. Let us start from the presumption that bicycle accidents are a problem. (I do not think they are, because accidents will always happen.) In an interview with The Daily, Sergeant Al James of Public Safety (who also hadn’t seen any statistics) noted that if bikers “aren’t riding in the arcades, they would probably have to be in the pedestrian malls.” I wish James had been on the Pedestrian Review Board, because that makes serious sense.

I sketched the Quad for Powers, with a circle representing the Intersection of Death, though we all know that it is actually a rhombellahedron, colloquially known as a “clusterfuck.” With more traffic in that area, there would be even less accessibility for physically disabled people, not to mention a general decrease in security. Whereas before bikers were equally distributed in the arcades and the street, now the main entranceway is that tiny gateway on the Education Building side barely big enough for a suckling pig.

This was probably my best argument. By coincidence, just as I was in the middle of it, Powers’ assistant walked in and said that she was late for a meeting. I begged Powers to consider the Intersection of Death, how it was bad for both security AND accessibility; how by solving one problem poorly, the administration was creating several more; how she is new and can change things and she needs to make them understand that they can’t just keep taking things away from us; how we need a dialogue. “I’ll look into it,” she said, proving that life actually is like the movies. She opened the door, signifying we were finished.

I wasn’t. Outside her office, with her two assistants looking up from their computers, my voice echoing down the hall, I asked her to consider the slippery slope, told her that once the ban is fully in effect it will be even harder to change things. Powers, I discovered, does not believe in the slippery slope.

Powers did not know what the Intersection of Death was. This is not her fault. She is new here, and she works in Tresidder. Anyway, I do not think any other administrator knows the area much better. I do not see Etchemendy riding his bike through White Plaza every day. Hennessy rides his cute electro-cart. In fact, I would venture to guess that most administrative staff do not ride bikes on campus.

The bicycle ban may make sense, but the administration is letting us down if they think that this Pedestrian Review Group does not need to justify itself. “Bumps and bruises” are not just cause. Accessibility is valid argument, worth talking about. But if the ban only creates more problems, what good is it?

Why was this Pedestrian Review Group called, when there are far more important issues on campus? Who was on this group? What research did they do? And what idiot came up with the name “Ped Zone?”

I agree that at peak hours traffic is problematic, but a full-time ban is excessive. At 5 p.m. there is almost no one around, except happy tourists and brides. I do not believe the arguments brought up by the administration are convincing. Students want evidence that this bike ban is worthwhile, and not just the aftermath of its implementation. We want to be treated as equal partners in this university. Technically, there are more students than administrators, more angry fraternity boys than deans of students, but we’ll allow them a voice if they deign to listen to ours. It is not crazy to demand information. It is foolish to deny it.

Yesterday President Hennessy finally emailed me:

Dear Mr. Franich:

Thank you for your input on the bicycle policy. We have passed it along to the office responsible for public safety.

Sincerely,

John Hennessy

He did not tell me his favorite flavor of ice cream. I hold no grudge. Hennessy, the Dean of Students, the Provost, the Vice Provost and the Board of Directors — they are not like us. They do not live at Stanford, they just work here. I was waiting for a personal conversation, but administrators must guard what they say. Many of my friends are going into the corporate world; there is not much idealism on Wall Street. And Stanford is a corporation. Only for us students, is it a way of life.

I admire Dr. Powers. She spoke to me as if I was just another student, and for a major administrator at a top-ranked university, that says a lot. I hope that by disseminating what she told me, I have helped to answer the question many students have been asking: Why? It is not her fault that her arguments lack research. I don’t know why she is worried. I am giving people information they have been asking for. In a way, I am doing her job for her. We are all in this together, after all.

At 5:30 in the afternoon, on a clear day, there is something very pleasant about biking through the arcades — the echoing whirr of wheels in the quiet of near-dusk. I never used to appreciate that, before the bicycle ban. We always forget the little joys until they are gone. I do not think Hennessy and Powers have ever biked through the arcades of the Quad. That is a shame.

I’m finished with the bicycle ban. But check this shit. All it took to get a meeting with the fricking Dean of Students was a bunch of scrawls on binder paper laid on the President’s doorstep. That is pretty cool. Someone will listen, if you are devoted, or absurd, enough to try.

Darren Franich will never write about the Bicycle Ban again. Don’t bother emailing him at dfranich@stanford.edu. By the way, President Hennessy’s office is in Building 10.