Happy days are here again
Rational thought emanated from Ames, IA this afternoon, making state and local headlines. Iowa State University President Greg Geoffroy announced that the school's annual VEISHEA festival will not have any special alcohol restrictions placed upon it, a reversal of a policy in place since 1998 that outlawed all drinking on campus during that weekend, even by students above the legal age. The largest student-run festival in the nation has been marred by violence and riots in recent years. It was cancelled last year in the wake of the latest riot, but is returning in April of '06.It never made sense to outlaw alcohol on campus during the event, whether it be in the residence halls, or food establishment facilities, such as the Maintanance Shop in the Memorial Union. Put aside for the moment the facts that students are only rebelling for rebellion's sake and that creating this additional rule only creates one more for students to break, the direct consequence has been that parties became fewer, but much larger, and moved off-campus.
I partook of the after hours festivities as a student, drinking underage in violation of the state's-- and the nation's-- archaic alcohol laws-- much as I drive 75 in a 65 mile-per-hour traffic zone, but I was always mildly annoyed that university students couldn't get worked up to protest any issue of more importance than preserving their right to rock and roll all night, and party ev-ah-ree day.
The glorification of youth and a fear of aging are largely accountable for the students' behavior. Fellow alumni and students often point out the coincidence that the riots seem to occur every four years. Not really. Every four years there's an entirely new batch of students on campus (along with them, a new batch of old high school friends from out of town,) and many have it on their life's list of goals to acquire colorful stories for sharing in their golden years-- maybe not stories of having thrown fiery garbage cans into the street, but to have been there when it happened.
My VEISHEA of Wine and Roses was in 1994, near the end of my freshman year. There was no riot and no tear gas that year, but we did lay claim to the one and only murder in festival history-- a nineteen-year-old out-of-towner bludgeoned to death on the front lawn of a fraternity house. My friends and I still talk about it, though I always viewed it as more of a random slaying, along the lines of the double murder at the State Fair in the late '90s. No one thought to cancel the Fair after that crime.
Ames police deserve their share of the blame for past problems. I've never understood why the violations of noise ordinances and underage drinking statutes warranted an attack by tear gas, anyway, but in 2003, for example, police arrived at an off-campus party, already donned in the city's newly-purchased riot gear, and began hosing the crowd with pepper spray before any of the eventual property damage had taken place.
The new policy puts the responsibility of student conduct back where it belongs-- on the shoulders of students. Adult students (meaning those over 21, I guess) will be free to pursue their pastimes, and hopefully, tragic consequences for the rest can be minimized with a few public pleas for safety and respect for public and private property. That's the best we can reasonably hope for until we repeal a law that turns the average American teenager and 20-year-old into a bootlegger and a criminal.
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Baseball's puffed-up steroid scandal is probably the reason that retired players like Kirk Gibson and Roberto Clemente have been on the cover of Wheaties' boxes in recent months. General Mills doesn't want to guess wrong.
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I'll bet Angelina is feeling threatened by Jennifer's new image.
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Quote of the day: FOX Football's Terry Bradshaw, on this week's Monday Night Football game, "This idea the (unbeaten) Colts need to lose a game so they can concentrate on winning a Super Bowl is like me saying I'll just go ahead and get another divorce so I can focus on my next marriage."
posted by CM @ 3:03 PM
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