It’s difficult not to notice it.

OU is going green, eco-friendly, sustainable, whatever.

We see signs and recycling bins all over the place, but there are important problems lost in the mix.

We are spending thousands of dollars on fancy new bike racks, but the only space officially for bikers is a small piece of the sidewalk on the south oval.

These are bike racks that weren’t built here, weren’t designed here and have no connection to OU, other than future concrete.

We’re going out of our way to build these foreign bike racks, spending too much money and materials during these days of recession and fee hikes. Yet we have bike racks all over campus we aren’t allowed to use.

We have trees, bushes and railings to which students aren’t supposed to be locking their bikes. We should be able to put them to use.

Locking bikes to something other than bike racks will not make OU unattractive; it will show we do in fact use our space for something other than aesthetics.

It’s terribly ironic, those who protect the environment by biking aren’t allowed to use nature for any practical purposes.

Instead, there are buildings like Gaylord where the bike racks are behind the building, possibly giving the impression OU is ashamed of its cyclists.

Cyclists should have the right to chain their bikes where they wish.

We are very happy about all the green measures around campus, but we can’t help but think there are better solutions that don’t include spending thousands of dollars.