You live off-campus, like almost half of Multnomah's students. You don't have a car yet (you hope to get one during the summer, although your prospects are getting bleaker as gas prices increase), and so you take the bus to college.

Rain drenches you as you walk down the hill from chapel. Your backpack is heavy -- eight pounds heavier than the on-campus students'. The extra weight is comparative to Strong's Exhaustive Concordance and the NIV Exhaustive Concordance. You have carefully packed your backpack with three books, three binders and your Bible -- everything you need for your four classes today.

As the rain pelts down, you grimace, thinking about the brown paper bag containing your lunch that you carefully tucked at the top of your pack. Now it's soaked. Yuck.

You sigh, wondering, "Why didn't someone put in lockers on campus?"

Without lockers, off-campus students are left holding the bag -- literally. They can't run back to their dorm rooms to grab a book or binder. Everything they need for the day somehow gets shoved into their packs and toted around all day.

After each class, you hoist your damp, extra-heavy backpack onto your shoulders and lug it to your next class. Your back starts to ache. By the end of the day, you're tired -- very tired. And you still have to walk to the bus stop.

You remember everything you've ever heard about backpacks being bad for your back, and believe it.

This scenario is normal for 49.9 percent of Multnomah's students. The on-campus students, on the other hand, only carry the books they need for one or two classes. They can always run back to their dorm and grab whatever they forgot. And then there are extra things on-campus students don't lug around with them: lunches, purses, gym clothes and coats.

Off-campus students need lockers, some place to drop their stuff between classes, during lunch, or on their way to the gym.

Seminary Dean Don Brake and the other people in charge of planning the new seminary building have included an area in the building for lockers. Good. That's a start. According to Dr. Brake, however, these lockers are primarily for the seminary students.

The college has more than twice as many students as the seminary. Where are the off-campus college students supposed to leave their books?

The lockers in the seminary building should be available for the college students, too. After all, the college has been sharing its classrooms with the seminary for years. Now the seminary can return the favor.