you don't have to lie

Education Week is in full swing at BYU. Everywhere you turn, you see middle-aged moms walking around with their canvas totes either scurrying to a class or aimlessly wandering the campus taking in the "sites." I am sure that most attendees love this time of year as they get to gather in Utah, see family/friends, and be spiritually uplifted all at the same time (not to mention the fact that it is probably one of the best weeks of the year for the BYU bookstore). My problem with education week is (*drum roll please*) parking. It just so happens that the law school's new student orientation always falls on the same week of education week. Which means that we have to share our parking lot with the attendees.

BYU Security is kind enough to "reserve" a few parking spaces for our students since they know we are going to be here. So on Wednesday morning the barricades go up and there is a security guard that stands there in order to only allow 1Ls to come through. So yesterday Luis was going to pick me up from the law school and I told him to simply tell the security guard that he was a law student so they would let him in. So Luis pulls up to the security guard, rolls down the window and says that he is a law student. The security guards promptly responds with, "Are you here for orientation?" At this point Luis didn't know which answer to give. If he said that he was here for orientation there was a chance he would be told to go park somewhere else and that the saved parking spaces were for others. But then again, if he said that he wasn't here for orientation he might be told that the parking spots really were for the people going to orientation and he would have to go find a parking spot in no-man's land. So he decided to come clean and just say that his wife was actually the law student and he was just coming to pick her up. The security officer was annoyed and said, "Well you didn't have to lie."

Fast forward to today. I had to come to school once again for orientation (this time I dropped Luis off at work and kept the car). I parked the car and went into the building to meet up with the rest of my group. 5 minutes later, one of our fellow SBA Officers meets up with us at the moot court room and exclaims, "I HATE EDUCATION WEEK! THERE IS NOWHERE TO PARK!!!" The rest of us tried to explain that there was reserved parking for us. He told us that he drove up to the security officer, explained that he was a law student, and the security officer told him that he needed to park elsewhere. So I asked, "Did you tell them that you were here for orientation?" He had no idea that was what he needed to say. So then I told him the story of what had happened to Luis the day before. To which he responded, "So you DO have to lie!"