I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed this until now. All of Ross Kuhn’s enrol­ment emails fol­low the same ridicu­lous form, wherein ideas are grouped by numeric points and sub-points:

Dear Student

1. 2007 STUDENT CARDS.

In both the mailed “Enrol­ment 2007″ infor­ma­tion pack­age, and my recent emails to you, ref­er­ence was made to the release of a new plas­tic stu­dent card, with a digi­tised image, for 2007. The Uni­ver­sity has decided that these cards will be issued dur­ing the remain­der of 2006 to stu­dents who have pre-enrolled for 2007. Please note the following:

1.1 2007 stu­dent cards will only be issued to those stu­dents who have pre-enrolled online for 2007 or whose paper 2007 pre-enrolment has been processed by their faculty;

1.2 Trans­port con­ces­sions for 2007 will also be issued at this time to eli­gi­ble stu­dents. To be eli­gi­ble you must be: an Aus­tralian Cit­i­zen or have Per­ma­nent Res­i­dent sta­tus (pri­vate fee pay­ing inter­na­tional stu­dents are not eli­gi­ble), enrolled full-time and not engaged in busi­ness or employ­ment. Note that, while the 2007 con­ces­sion will be issued dur­ing 2006, it will not be recog­nised for the pur­poses of trans­port con­ces­sions until 1 Jan­u­ary 2007. Con­tinue to use your exist­ing con­ces­sion for the remain­der of 2006. Stu­dents not pre-enrolling for 2007 will con­tinue using the 2006 travel con­ces­sion enti­tle­ment as usual;

1.3 Stu­dent cards will be issued from the fol­low­ing sites dur­ing the dates and times indi­cated. Please ensure you bring your 2006 stu­dent card, or some other form of photo iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (eg driver’s licence), with you :

Rooms 7 & 8, The Dar­ling­ton Cen­tre, Level 1, School­house Build­ing (1A-174 City Road, Dar­ling­ton — adja­cent to the Insti­tute Build­ing, fol­low the signs). This site will open at 12 noon on 8 Novem­ber. From 9 Novem­ber until late Decem­ber open­ing hours will be 9:00am to 5:00pm week­days. Stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties are wel­come to come to the Stu­dent Cen­tre in the Carslaw Build­ing to obtain a stu­dent card;

Fac­ulty of Health Sci­ences, Stu­dent Enquiry Counter, A Block. This site will be open from Tues­day, 7 Novem­ber until Fri­day, 17 Novem­ber between 11:00am and 3.30pm week­days. Dis­abled access is pro­vided. FHS stu­dents wish­ing to use the Dar­ling­ton Cen­tre as an alter­na­tive site are wel­come to do so;

Fac­ulty of Law, Phillip Street Cam­pus. The Fac­ulty will be advis­ing its stu­dents by sep­a­rate email as to the open­ing date of its card issu­ing facil­ity at Phillip Street. Law stu­dents wish­ing to use the Dar­ling­ton Cen­tre as an alter­na­tive site are wel­come to do so;

1.4 Will there be queues? Most likely, par­tic­u­larly at the Dar­ling­ton Cen­tre. It was the University’s inten­tion to com­mence issu­ing cards from the start of the pre-enrolment oper­a­tion on 3 Octo­ber. Dif­fi­cul­ties in secur­ing the trans­port con­ces­sion holo­graph from the trans­port author­i­ties have delayed the start. For this rea­son we will oper­ate the Dar­ling­ton Cen­tre until late Decem­ber. If you find a queue which you con­sider unac­cept­able, come back later in the day or on a sub­se­quent day. The Dar­ling­ton Cen­tre will be able to issue approx­i­mately 600 cards a day.

1.5 It’s impos­si­ble for me to come in, what do I do? Watch for my sub­se­quent emails. If you do not attend cam­pus in-person due to the cir­cum­stances of your enrol­ment, e.g. off-shore, inter­state etc, you will need to con­tact the Stu­dent Card Office after 19 Jan­u­ary 2007 to make arrange­ments to obtain your stu­dent card. You will noti­fied of the con­tact details soon.

2. THANKS TO THOSE WHO HAVE PRE-ENROLLED.

The greater bulk of stu­dents con­tin­u­ing in 2007 have now pre-enrolled, please accept my thanks for under­tak­ing this task so promptly. Remem­ber, hav­ing pre-enrolled, you can vary your unit choices up until the end of the year.

3. FOR THOSE YET TO PRE-ENROL ON-LINE FOR 2007.

Go to MyUni at http://myuni.usyd.edu.au
Log in
Click on MyAd­min
Click on Stu­dent Self Admin­is­tra­tion (the face of the Lion)
Select Pre-enrolment 2007.

You can select HELP at a num­ber of loca­tions dur­ing the process

4. INITIAL PRE-ENROLMENT CLOSES ON FRIDAY, 10 NOVEMBER 2006.

Ross Kuhn
for
William Adams
Reg­is­trar.
7 Novem­ber 2006

Good­ness. My inner Arts stu­dent and lover of writ­ing is bawl­ing its eyes out.

By the way, I love 1.4. It’s such a great text for argu­ing against bureau­crats writ­ing emails: clearly, some­one has plenty of pent-up angst about the trans­port author­i­ties and feels the need to rant to 45,000 stu­dents, most of whom aren’t going to give a toss. The queues are there, we have to go in, and we’re going to blame the admin­is­tra­tion. That’s just the way it works, stop try­ing to pass the buck. Sigh. It’d be nice to think that mar­ket­ing depart­ments shouldn’t need to vet all comms (they cer­tainly don’t in uni­ver­si­ties, no mat­ter how much bureau­cracy is in place — there are plenty of ways around it all), but some­how every­thing just works bet­ter when they do.