The problem is especially serious at Atlas. When you arrive there later in the day, you’re greeted by a pile of bicycles that reaches far beyond the beech hedge that demarcates the parking facility. That makes the situation highly problematic, since you need to lift your bicycle over your head as you carefully navigate your way between the other bicycles like a tightrope walker in search of a spot.

Since I’m an experienced student, I’ve mastered these maneuvering skills quite well at this point. What helps is the fact that my green racing bike is one size smaller and therefore lighter, which allows me to park it in the smallest openings of a bicycle stand with little effort. So far, my trick usually goes unnoticed. It’s only after I walk away without looking back that I sometimes hear someone say “Hey, don’t you need to lock it?”

No, I don’t. I trust you. It always amazes me how people respond to my answer, as if I’m crazy to assume that my fellow students are decent people. Because studying becomes much harder when you can never leave your laptop unattended. Projects and other collaborative activities become exhausting when you can’t rely on your fellow group members. People sometimes say that I’m naïve, but this faith in the people around me gives me a sense of peace and makes me feel completely at home on campus.

That’s why I’m willing to take the risk of not locking my bicycle, and so far I haven’t been punished for it. It did go wrong just once though. I was the last person to leave campus during an edition of GLOW. That afternoon, I had parked my bicycle next to the Zwarte Doos, only to find it a hundred meters away in the grass next to the Dommel and the Limbopad when I came back in the middle of the night. After my initial sense of shock, I said to myself: “A bit of joyriding doesn’t hurt anyone.” But please remember to place it back in the stand next time!