For once, let me take a moment to say something positive
about Transportation and Parking Services: The Arriba Shuttle is a pretty sweet
deal.

While almost everything else about T&PS may be pricey
and inefficient, this little gem defies logic and offers an amazing service for
students living off campus. The shuttle, which loops around three stops near
Vons before circling back to Mandeville Auditorium, can even be tracked online
— though it’s so conveniently frequent this isn’t necessary.

The only thing T&PS should do to improve this service is
expand — why doesn’t the office set up these efficient shuttles all over La
Jolla, instead of just the current Arriba and Nobel buses? (I
don’t even live near Arriba, I just started relying on the shuttle when, at the
beginning of Winter Quarter, San Diego’s Metropolitan Transit System rerouted
to avoid my stop entirely. I know at least a few Arriba passengers are in
similar positions.)

Now leave it to UCSD students to ruin a good thing. Because
the shuttle is such an awesome resource, it’s pretty popular, which
unfortunately means shuttles can get crowded. So each morning, as students from
all over La Jolla flock to the godsend on the corner of
Arriba, the seats fill quickly, leaving only an empty aisle down the shuttle’s
center for standing passengers. It appears on these occasions, students forget
all common courtesy, leaving their human decency at the bus’ pressurized doors.

Allow me to introduce: Aisle-Seat Kid. This guy always gets
on at the first stop; think of those jerks who come early to lecture, only to
grab the first or second seat from the aisle and thus cause every person after
them to do the “oh, sorry, excuse me” dance squeezing uncomfortably between the
back of the adjacent seat and the kid’s unyielding knees.

These people seem to have no sense of reality. Do they
really expect no one else to want those seats? And what is it about the aisle
they so stubbornly prefer, that they’d rather have people climb clumsily over
them? What’s worse: They’re usually the same tools who leave their backpacks
sitting in the middle aisle for people to trip over.

Then, once every bench is filled and you don’t have to deal
with people’s weird seat preferences, along comes Little Girl, Big Backpack.
Though she can take many forms, at our school she most commonly appears as an
Asian female science major.

This is a student whose only concern is her studies. She
gets on the bus just as the seats have filled, and parks beside the third row.
Her crime is much like that of Aisle-Seat Kid — she makes you climb past her
and her giant, growth-like bag. How she picks her resting place is still a
mystery, the only thing that’s clear is her resolve to block oncoming
passengers any way she can. Gripping the seat handle beside her, she remains
unfazed by the stream of riders, and blatantly ignores the common courtesy, and
common sense, backpacks-off rule.

She sets the tone for the passengers immediately after her,
and following suit the Personal-Space Hogs are unfortunately often the first
standing passengers at the back of the bus. These are riders who, again, seem
to stubbornly deny reality.

They stand in a single line — rather than two, which the bus
is designed to fit — about a body length away from one another. That means each
Personal-Space Hog is costing three valuable spots on the shuttle.

This might not seem like a big deal, but the Arriba service
has become so popular that during peak times only a few passengers from the
third stop are able to board. As the line to board wraps longer and longer
around the corner and bus after bus rolls past only allowing a few students on,
these hogs make their peers late to class or work, without a second thought.

And is it really worth it? You’re still standing on a
cramped bus, do those few minutes of slightly more breathing room really make
that much of a difference in your day? Probably not, but as bus after bus rolls
past, waiting students have to deal with the consequence of uncontrolled
tardiness.

There you are, crammed — or maybe not crammed, if you’re
near the back — onto the shuttle making a beeline to campus, and who do you
notice standing beside you? Possibly the worst offender of them all: Body-Odor
Guy.

Yeah, you know who I’m talking about. All of a sudden the
reek is all around you, suffocating you and killing the air, and there he is.
Arm lifted and grabbing the support bar he looks at his neighbors suspiciously
as if to respond to your suspicious looks with a guilty “wasn’t me.” But you know
the truth.

OK, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he just
pulled an all-nighter, is on his way to a midterm and didn’t have the chance to
shower — it happens to all of us. But in these situations it’s best to know
thyself; if you smell like ass don’t put your armpit in the face of an innocent
bystander.

So please, think about your shuttle manners. And next time
you’re in the back of the bus with an abundance of extra space, suggest your
neighbors move back to make room for more passengers — just make sure you’re
wearing deodorant first.