Some students at Pomona College are finding that the convenience of having a bicycle on campus is tempered by the hassle of finding a place to lock it. The perceived lack of sufficient bike racks at Pomona has become a matter of concern for administrators and students, bikers and non-bikers alike.

“I’ve been noticing more bikes on campus this semester, which is stressing out a network of too few bike racks to begin with,” Josh Propp PO ’13 wrote in an e-mail to The Student Life. “People have taken to locking their bikes basically to anything they can, which makes campus a little less beautiful and might increase the risk of theft.”

Propp added that bike storage is in especially short supply around Oldenborg Center, Smith Campus Center, and Frary Dining Hall.

Unable to find space on bike racks, some students now lock their bikes on fences, benches, and railings both inside and outside campus buildings.

The college has taken notice of the aesthetic and safety problems caused by bikes left in such locations, but the administration has chosen to be lenient about the enforcement of its rules about bike storage until more bike racks are added on campus, Dean of Campus Life Ric Townes said.

“The first point is you can’t put your bikes there,” Townes said. “So the second question is, ‘Where can we put our bikes?’ If we don’t have an answer to the second question, let’s not talk about the first part.”

Townes said the college plans to add more bike racks but has had trouble finding space for them. He mentioned the corral outside Wig Hall as a space that could hold many more racks and added that the new residence halls being built on North Campus will have bike storage both inside and out.

There is also the possibility of adding bike storage space inside residence halls to decrease bike theft, Townes said.

Townes added that the college will enforce its policy on bike storage more stringently if adequate space becomes available. If a bike is left in an obstructive space, where it could potentially interfere with movement in an emergency, the college “would remove the bike,” he said.

He did not say how the college would go about removing bikes, but that the process would likely involve cutting locks.