The Intramural Office... aka The Man

If there were one office on BYU Campus that I would call the epitome of "the man"... it would be the Intramural Office. They have too much power and are officially on "my list." They can pull you out of a tournament with just a whim, tell a player he can't play just by referencing rules they made simply for that purpose. In fact going to their website under "rules" this is what it says:

All contests will be governed by the official interscholastic amateur (amateur is right) rules as designated on the activity information sheet. A copy of each rulebook will be available to be checked out from the Intramural Office (who goes to the office to check this out, you're on the field over two miles away for crying out loud). The intramural office has additional rules (oh really... how convenient) for some events so as to equalize competition and to ensure the safety of all the participants (is that what you kids are calling it these days?). These are on the information sheet for each activity (no they are not). The Intramural Office reserves the right to amend or change any rule (hahahaha... ohhh the irony), and will inform all concerned by posting the changes at all appointed posting areas (making sure that the posting areas are as far away from the playing fields as humanly possible, thus ensuring human toil and suffering to ensure fair play).

If we are going to have this kind of governance then I demand to have an intramural lawyer on hand to read me my rights. Any legal volunteers? I had thought about going to law school for educational law, but I think I'm going to change my mind because this is ridiculous.

So let me relay an incident similar to all others I've had over the past several years. So the season schedules go on sale at 8am. People line up as early as 6:30am to get a good schedule. I've done this several times over the years, but this year I knew that one of the team members actually works out at 6am in the same building, so he offered to wait in line. I was grateful. What happened is that at 8am, they had people sign up for times to come back and purchase the schedule, so they didn't have to keep waiting in the line. Our scheduled time was 9am... conveniently at the same time we both had a staff meeting. I said that I would go get the schedule and he could go to the meeting. When I showed up, they said... John Doe's name is on the list, you are not John Doe and we need his ID. I said, we both work for BYU and will be on the same team. I'm the team captain and I have the money, can you make an exception. Of course the answer was no. I tried to get a hold of him but he was in the meeting and not reachable. I asked them again saying, if I can log on to RouteY and get his information (because of my security clearance) shouldn't that be enough. After calling their manager and realizing that I was a BYU employee, they finally allowed it and gave me a firm warning. Oh... my... gosh! Unnecessary drama... courtesy of BYU.