…And I’m not referring to the KU parking department this time. Last week, when I started work, the parking lot closest to my building was blissfully empty. Even if I happened to roll in late, closer to 10:00 than to 9:00, I would always be guaranteed a spot in the first four yellow spaces. Imagine my surprise on Monday when I pulled up, 9:00 a.m. on the dot, to find a sea of SUVs and sports cars stretching over three fourths of the parking lot. Grumbling, I found a spot on the opposite end and examined the cars on my way to work, trying to deduce what had happened. I noticed several greek-symbol decals on the cars, and sure enough, out in front of the row of sorority houses were big groups of blonde, over-tanned and underweight girls in sweat-shorts and pink tube tops chanting their sorority mantras and clapping in rhythm. Ahh, the joys of rush week.

Now I know people in sororities in fraternities - you can’t avoid them on this campus, really. I’d heard that there was a large Greek community at KU before I came, and I was pretty confused about why they would come to Kansas until someone enlightened me - no tasty baklava or gyros, just keggers and girls in teeny pink skirts that, for the life of me, I’ve never been able to figure out how they can sit down in them without revealing their clam-friends to the rest of the universe. I’ve never actually seen anyone in the act of sitting in those skirts; one minute they are standing and then the next minute they are sitting down, legs crossed and cell-phone/i-pod glued to the ears, fused to bad-bleach-job hair. Indeed this is a quandary for Physics-Boy and his friends, who would no doubt be happy devoting research energy to such a matter.

Anyhow, I’ve digressed. The point is that I know frat/sorority people that don’t fit the stereotype, and that are actually people and not some sort of party-monster that thrives on booze and bronze tanner. Yet the prejudice persists, in part because the cool frat/soro people I know have either quit/are quitting their houses, or just think it’s all a big joke anyways. For every cool person I know, there are thirty more that reaffirm the stereotype. The girls that remain utterly mystified by the bus system, halfway into spring semester, that stand at a bus stop for hours, whining about how stupid the bus drivers are into their cell phones while staring at me in my bohemian/Indian looking clothes like I am from Jupiter (assuming she knows what Jupiter is). Fair enough, sorority girl. You stay in your territory, and I’ll stay in mine.

Prejudices notwithstanding, rush week hasn’t really bothered me thus far, as for the past few days there have been spaces left at the other end - way, waaay at the other end, perhaps, but they were there - but not this morning. They took up all the spots this morning (god, how many more of them can there possibly be? They are multiplying like bacteria). Thus forcing me to park over at Memorial Stadium and having to walk up the big hill in the Kansas summer heat, which feels like being trapped in a sauna with the door sealed. Now if it had been for a worthy event - say cars were here for Relay for Life, for example, or maybe even some sort of track meet, I’d be more understanding and willing to put up with the longer walk.

But having to park on the other side of campus and walk over the bloody hill, so that a bunch of ditzy ex-prom queens can stand outside and annoy passing cars with their rhyming cheers all damned day?

It’s on, bitches. Nobody messes with karenology’s ability to park (save karenology herself, that is).