I don’t abuse animals, and I’ve never been arrested for urinating in public. I also don’t drive (allegedly or not) while intoxicated, without my seat belt and headlights.

You know what that makes me? Neither do I.

I do know, however, that for whatever reason, I’m on a lot longer leash than at least student-athletes Nick Linder and Omar Bynum. There could be a lot of reasons for this.

For instance, Nick Linder and Omar Bynum represent the university. Fair enough. Though we all get the urge to “represent” once in a while, skinny white kids like me aren’t generally high on the list of people who be frontin’. Athletes, on the other hand, are likely to show up on television, or at least they would be if we weren’t stuck in the middle of the pack in the Big 12.

I’m only likely to show up on the idiot box if I get caught in front of the union by a news crew who will ask me questions about university issues I’ve been ignoring for months, via a strict regimen of not attending GSB meetings, not entering into discussions with students or faculty and not attending Board of Regents meetings. But as a student and occasional employee of Iowa State, I still represent the university on some level, even if it isn’t standing next to Seneca Wallace on the media guide. If it is, well, that’s even better still, and someone else can take my spot writing columns.

The only other reason that the university would seem to have student-athletes on a shorter leash than the average person is that many of them are on full-ride scholarships.

Here’s where the grossest disparity is, because so am I.

That’s correct, folks at home, for some reason, Nick Linder can’t go take a leak in the alley without getting his ass in a sling, but for some reason, I can.

Now I’m sure not too many people think Linder, Bynum or any athlete’s really getting dumped on, but consider the fact

that a lot of other people in similar situations can do this without any real repercussion beyond a fine from the city of Ames. How much sense does that make?

That’s why I think it’s time to put every student, or at the very least, every student on a full-ride scholarship, on the same conduct code as our student-athletes. As far as I’m concerned, whether you’re going for free because you’re taking our women’s basketball team to the Final Four or they want you to be the next big-time researcher in the chemical engineering department, you should have to follow the same rules, though me using steroids don’t really affect my grades.

But that’s clearly not the way things are. If I got arrested for murder (and would subsequently be released on my own recognizance – if you don’t believe me, check the police blotter), I’d be sitting pretty until my trial came up. But if a jock decides to get himself piss-drunk and embarrass his family and friends, he may be out of luck for life because he did something stupid.

While the latter may be fair, it needs to go both ways. No matter what reason students are on scholarship, they need to be treated the same. If that promising National Merit scholar gets arrested, make him or her go through the same procedure as the athlete. It’s only fair.

Myself and the rest of the National Merit student-non-athletes have it easy. We have to maintain a 3.0. That’s it. A 3.0 with conviction for OWI or without. It’s all the same. Athletes have to maintain their grades, stay out of trouble with the law, attend class (something most non-athletes seem to have a great deal of trouble with) and then fit in practices, games, alumni banquets and everything for the sake of “the program”. Sure, most of us would probably trade with them, but the differences in treatment seem awfully arbitrary.

Nick Linder, Omar Bynum and I all have one thing in common, and probably only one thing, due to my gross inability to dunk and tackle: we attend school at the expense of Iowans, other students, and even the faculty. Athletics and National Merit programs are probably the last two things the university would cut in a budget crisis, because they’re both supposed to make Iowa State money in the long run.

It’s only right that we should be held to the same standard.

Tim Kearns is a senior in political science from Bellevue, Neb.