Move-in day: the hectic reorganization and repopulation of a city’s transient renters occurs on September 1st every year without fail. The U-Hauls get packed, the clothes and desks and beds are toted and then there’s the Tetris-like maneuvering of couches up and down flights of stairs. But, assuredly, nowhere in the world has a move-in day quite as chaotic as Allston. Here, an entire community of students is dissembled, uprooted and rearranged, all in one incestuous exchange of living units. The whole town is a buzz; it’s a great time to go discount furniture shopping — just watch out for those bed bugs. Even Blanchard’s Liquors gets into the spirit, decorating their windows with a festive “Sorry, No Boxes” sign.

In a time so concerned with over-consumption, it’s ironically refreshing the way in which Allston recycles itself every year. Arriving students assume a take-a-penny, leave-a-penny attitude towards abandoned amenities. For instance: the graduating Political Science major’s desk may become the sticky surfaced beer-pong table for those pledging themselves to the most recent ZBT tool-shed.

I wonder who gets to start the process. That one person who moves out, allowing some other to move in to his space, freeing up an apartment for yet another, and soon the trickle becomes a torrent of boxes and broken futons left on the side of the road. Still, despite all the curb-side furnishings, the entire neighborhood is homeless for an afternoon.

The move-in experience requires a great deal of mental and physical endurance, and leaves everybody involved feeling both restless and exhausted. All of this is exacerbated by the anxiety of parents frantic from freeing their hatchlings into rented nests (plus utilities). This stress is not unfounded, considering the poor condition of the average Allston apartment, degraded over time by undergraduate abandon and neglectful building management. Rather than invest in their properties, landlords rely on the naivety of young. out-of-state renters whose sensibilities are easily satiated by fresh paint and unfamiliar surroundings. There’s always going to be a sucker coming in to rent a newly coated hole-in-the-wall.

Of course, not everyone is moving. Allston doesn’t consist entirely of collegiate vagrants and amateur rock bands that can’t get enough money together to extend their leases while maintaining a quarter-share for the practice space. Believe it or not, families live here, too. Some have lived here for 10 or 20 years, some even longer. Year after year, these residents see a mad rush of the incoming student population descending upon the streets of Allston like the locusts that ravaged the Biblical city of whatever-it-was leaving nothing but a trail of soiled mattresses and three-legged coffee tables in their wake. And I’m sure that over the years they’ve noticed, with the ever growing population of BU students, that the move-in day fiasco has only gotten worse and worse.

The city of Boston has certainly noticed, with a grin, slyly handing out egregious violations for trash piles, an unavoidable byproduct of this process. Rather than dedicating resources towards helping the situation as a city government should, they seem to take the opportunity for unchecked racketeering. My former landlord called City Hall to get a schedule of trash removal, and when they said they were bringing a truck they handed the guy a thousand dollar violation. While juggling a hectic move and new semester, landlords and student alike seem too distracted to realize they’re being taken advantage of by a city that know that ropes all too well.

Within this urban setting consumed by chaos, I’m surprised BU doesn’t know how to walk the line themselves. With classes starting mere hours from the beginning of most rental agreements, it seems the administration should have allotted a day of rest, an actual labor day — one free of labor, for all this mess to settle. I mean, what is so hallowed about the Day After Labor Day that forces professors and students back in the classroom? Just think how much attention is being paid in classes attended by half-awake zombies exhausted from moving-out and moving-in within the same twenty-four hour cycle. Just think how much tuition money is being wasted by half-wit students when the few first days are simple confusion of new apartments, new neighbors and new lives. Did we really have to start so immediately?

All we ask for is an administration that takes a conscientious approach to providing its community’s needs, for thinking about the problems faced by its students. In this case, it’s just a little bit of time and space. Yet once again, the University is not helping where it should, and is only making the situation worse by functioning in bureaucratic oblivion.

What solution do we have? Just put it in the basement.