The Dower Power Hour

The Stud-Ants and the Great Parking Problem

There was once a great Ant Hill of Higher Education. Every day thousands of ants would ride their caterpillars from all over the countryside to learn how to be productive members of the colony. One day the Queen of the Hill heard a loud noise.

Opening her window, she saw a crowd of angry stud-ants below. “Why aren’t all of you in class?” she asked.

The crowd yelled back, “We are tired of being forced to buy parking passes for our caterpillars! We pay enough as it is!”

Worried, the Queen replied, “But if you do not pay to park your caterpillars, how can I afford to maintain the parking lots you use?”

But the ants were unconvinced, and so the Queen let all the ants park their caterpillars for free. Several months went by and the roads around the hill and parking spaces began to deteriorate. Once again an angry crowd formed outside the Queen’s window.

“We demand better roads and parking!” they cried.

“Oh dear,” said the Queen, “I simply cannot afford to pay for all the upkeep now that we don’t have parking passes anymore.”

“We don’t care about the details,” the crowd replied, “just fix the potholes and repaint the lines so that our caterpillars don’t trip or bump into each other.”

So the Queen pondered about the problem and finally decided to increase the tuition for all the ants in order to pay for the parking improvements. “At last,” she thought, “I have finally made all the stud-ants happy.” But to her surprise, only weeks later a new crowd had formed.

“What is it this time?” she said in exasperation.

“My Queen, we are the stud-ants that do not have caterpillars. Every day we walk to the Ant Hill, and we don’t think it’s fair that we should have to pay for the parking and the roads,” the stud-ants explained.

“That sounds fair,” said the Queen, “but how can I pay for the parking upkeep without the tuition increase?”

The stud-ants thought and thought, when finally the smallest ant in the group had an idea.

“Why not create a special parking pass and charge the stud-ants money to purchase it? That way stud-ants with caterpillars will pay for the parking lots that they are wearing down and stud-ants without them aren’t charged money for a service they aren’t using!” he declared.

The Queen thought this was a fine idea and quickly went about implementing it. Finally, she collapsed on her throne, exhausted from all the fuss about parking. It was only then she realized that she had ended up exactly where she had started.

The moral of the story: “Stud-ants will always be upset about parking.”