This morning, I had a near-death experience.

As I was innocently walking along my merry way to class, I came to a crosswalk. The sign said walk, so I started across the street.

Suddenly, some Dale Earnhart wanna-be zipped through the intersection, blatantly ignoring the red light — and me in the middle of the road.

Had it not been for my catlike reflexes enabling me to jump out of harm’s way, I might have been seriously hurt. But if the driver had been following the rules in the first place, I would never have been placed in such jeopardy.

Our society is based on rules and laws — that little fine print that somehow manages to both annoy and help us at the same time. Without rules to structure our lives, we would be existing in a state of total chaos. Without rules, how could we have order, or any type of regulation? We couldn’t. It would be impossible.

Yet, many of us chose to ignore these little lifesavers. We seem to think of them as inconveniences, just another time-consuming thing that makes our day more difficult and our lives more hassle-filled.

Iowa State itself has several rules that students tend to take with a grain of salt. For instance, dorm life comes with its own little set of regulations, meant to make your stay as safe and stress-free as possible. But, if you stroll down a hall in any residence hall at any given time, you’re bound to see the rules being broken — or at least bent quite a bit.

Take, for instance, that “no pets” rule. While it’s perfectly all right to have fish and assorted other aquarium-bound critters, animals such as rabbits, mice, and kittens are prohibited.

Yeah, right. Almost everyone knows of someone who has a blacklisted critter in their room. I personally know two people who had bunnies last fall, and a friend of mine in Maple Hall lives next door to a cat.

So much for that rule, let’s move on to “no stealing utensils from food service.” No, wait. That one is so obviously broken that it’s not even worth discussing. The little regulation about not having overnight visitors of the opposite sex is just about as laughable; in fact, the entire residence hall system seems to be full of rules that were meant to be broken.

Getting to and from class is another rule-filled area; and again, the rules are broken with regularity. How many of us have ignored a “no parking” sign as we zipped onto campus to deliver a late paper or pay an overdue bill? Considering the number of tickets DPS gives out in a day, I’d say quite a few of us fall into this category.

There’s also a rule prohibiting bicycles on a number of sidewalks on and around campus. Despite this rule, pedestrians often find themselves having to dodge defiant bikers hurriedly pedaling their way to and from class.

Pedestrians and bikers unite in consistently breaking that little rule about not crossing the street against the signal. I did a little research myself on this one. While waiting in the bus at the Lincoln Way and Welch intersection, I counted twenty people jaywalking in just one lapse of traffic — and that was just in a two-minute period. Of course, it was over the noon hour, and people were in a hurry, and …

We all make excuses for bending the rules, and then we get offended when our excuses aren’t validated. Believe it or not, it doesn’t really matter if you’re running late for class, causing you to run that stop sign; nor is the fact that you can’t sleep at night without your kitty cuddled up around your feet an issue of life or death.

It doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) matter who you are or who you know, you still did a bad thing. Breaking rules carries with it punishments, ranging from a slap on the wrist to getting evicted, or worse.

It also inconveniences, and sometimes endangers the lives of the people around you.

Think about that next time you are coming up to a red light, without a cop in sight. Think about that next time you light a candle in your dorm, get on your bike or walk across the street.

As stupid as some rules might seem, they’re all there for a reason. The reasons might not be clear to you, or they might not make much sense, but the fact remains, the rules are there.

And they’re there to be followed.

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Holly Benton is a sophomore in animal science from Early.