Bad Karma
Posted on February 6, 2007 by Ching under Flickr, Life, School.
Good people experience bad karma, too — especially when they make bad choices. Yes, friends. I got busted.
For a couple of semesters now I’ve been parking illegally on campus. At first I’d only do it only once in a while. Most of the time on game nights. With the advent of Wichita State men’s basketball’s recent winning streak the popularity of basketball has increased. More people attend the basketball games than ever before. Usually game nights are plagued with chaos and anarchy in the parking lot so parking illegally is often excusable. Well, it’s the least of the campus police’s worries. Besides, usually there’s no where else to park. Actually, during the last home game even the faculty lot that I got accustomed to parking in was full so I had to scavenge for a different parking spot.
Anyway, getting away with it only encouraged the bad behavior. It came to a point when I would park in my favorite lot even on regular nights just because it was so covenient. A utilitarian at heart, I rationalized the behavior by telling myself that the ends justified the means. Okay, so maybe in this situation I may have let the hedonist side of me win but hey, we can’t all be good one hundred per cent of the time. To me a shorter trek to class was worth the risk of getting busted (particularly with the temperatures as cold as they have been). Or so it seemed, when I was getting away with it.
I am not really an unethical person. On the contrary, I’m probably one of the most straight-laced people you will ever meet. I have a great respect for rules — except of course when they cause me to walk through a frozen tundra for ten minutes at ten o’clock in the evening.
Kidding aside, one of the guys in Accounting class actually made a really astute observation a couple of weeks ago. He said that unethical behavior has more to do with opportunity rather than one’s character. He said, given a situation in which it is relatively easy (or convenient, in my case) to behave unethically and there is a slim likelihood of getting caught, ethical and unethical individuals have about the same predisposition to behaving unethically. He further stated that research has shown that in these situations, ethical people are just as likely as the unethical people to commit an unethical act. So you see, even good people fall prey to compromising situations.
As for me, I’ve learned my lesson. No more parking in faculty lots no matter how cold it is. The ends may justify the means but, at $60 a pop, this poor girl doesn’t have the means to continue to pay for any more parking fines.
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