I walked back from a short, five-minute trip to the C-store and tried to open the doorknob to my apartment.

It was locked.

Again.

I was seriously gone for five minutes, and one of my darling roommates locked me out of my apartment. I stood at my door, knocking incessantly for what seemed like an eternity, and gave up.

I knew I would have to walk all the way down to the other side of the apartments to the Res Life center.

Upon arrival, looking dismal, lost, confused and out of place, clutching my grocery bag of pizza rolls and Dr. Pepper, I told the woman at the front desk that I had been locked out of my apartment again and needed someone to let me in.

She slipped me a yellow paper to fill out and nonchalantly told me a fee would be added onto my bill.

Fantastic!

I already pay $3,000+ a school year to live on campus, and now I’m being charged to unlock my apartment.

Now, I know housing is probably thinking that by charging us a fee to be let into our apartments we will surely learn our lesson. We’ll never do it again!

But, you can’t teach someone not to be forgetful.

And that, I am.

Call me a risk taker, but I assume that no one in my apartment is going to go on some great adventure, locking the door behind them at 2 p.m. after I leave for a five-minute walk across the street.

Surely, we’re going to get robbed in broad daylight three miles outside of Evansville, Ind. The most menacing thing I can see looking out my front door are the horses across the street.

This is not the only extraneous fee USI duels out to students.

My best friend lives in the dorms, which is a good 20-minute walk from where I live. Anytime she comes to visit, she risks getting a ticket from USI Security for parking in front of my apartment.

The only other option is that she walks over here and back by herself.

The problem  is we are college students. We’re borderline nocturnal.

She doesn’t come over at 2 in the afternoon and decide to leave at 5 so she can retreat to her dorm and get her darling, prim and proper self ready for bed dressed in her onesie.

She usually leaves around midnight, and I don’t think anyone should be walking across campus (and through the woods) at that hour.

This leaves her with options of paying a $40 dollar ticket or getting raped.

But when security sees that her parking sticker doesn’t match the rest of the cars in our parking lot, they jump on her car eagerly, yellow ticket in hand.

I think it’s what they live for. There is visitor parking at the C-store, but it is usually packed to capacity, and even when it isn’t, it’s a pain to walk the distance in the cold depths of the winter season. There is plenty of parking available around my apartment anyway. Why not put it to good use?

And a security escort could be ideal, but my friend usually brings her car with her to my apartment in case we decide to leave the university and venture out into the Evansville region. The same argument could be made that we could call security to escort us back to her dorm, but it’s too much of a hassle. We shouldn’t have to have extensive amounts of documentation just to park on our own campus. 

USI, as close and dear to my heart as you may be, you, just like any other university in America, are money suckers.