"This is what gets at the heart of the issue. It isn’t 'Mifflin concerns us,' it’s 'you guys shouldn’t party that weekend," w
rites University of Wisconsin student John Waters, denouncing the Madison Police Department's "condescending letter." (
"Mifflin" is an annual Madison block party that dates back to 1969.)
For students only, and on this weekend only, the city thinks it is OK to turn downtown into a police state, where they will seek and destroy any attempt at having unsanctioned fun. Ridiculous.
Next: “If you look under 21 and have alcohol, you will be asked to provide proof of age.” It’s official, the Constitution is being thrown out that weekend. I’m 23, but people say I have a baby face, so go ahead, demand my ID — the Fourth Amendment is really more of a guideline anyway. Ridiculous.
The super-liberal Madison authorities go in for this show-your-papers business to thwart the freedom of individuals to associate with each other over music and beer, but let the GOP at the state level require IDs for voting and they'll say we've descended into a police state. I can just hear these "progressives" righteously lecturing about how requiring IDs for voting is really underhandedly a way to discriminate. But the police department's policy is openly discriminatory against the young (and — if you want to talk about what's really going on — I'd suggest that that it's underhandedly discriminatory against males).
I defend Mifflin more than any event we have, not out of some misplaced adolescent desire to get hammered, but because it represents everything about this school that makes me proud to wake up a Badger. Yes, our academics are awesome, but it is the social life here that sets UW apart for me. Mifflin happens to be the pinnacle of that life, and is, as it has always been, meant to be a celebration of everything it means to be a Badger.
Simply put, it’s just fun to get up early and party with your whole school after a winter of cold and two semesters of hard work at a top-notch university. To the powers that drove us to this point, I would ask that you pay attention to the entire reputation of this school, not just your idea of what that reputation should be.
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49 comments:
It's not easy being young, rich, and good-looking.
Just go to the capital building, bang drums, tape up posters on the granite and PAR-TAY!
Gee, they voted for socialism, and now there's all this police state bullshit?
I am shocked — shocked— to find that fascism is going on in here!
Mifflin happens to be the pinnacle of that life
Now that's just sad.
It is a police state if the police do not block off your street, provide security, and re-route traffic so you can have a giant party?
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness does not equate to being able to charge the city tens of thousands in extra police costs.
I would also remind this student of the stabbings of recent years, the riots of 15 years ago, and the many illegal acts he and his cohorts have carried out all in the name of the Mifflin Street Block Party.
I grew up in Madison, went to parties from the late 80's until the late 90's when there was nothing `neighborhood' or UW about it at all.
The Mifflin Party died almost 20 years ago. What it used to mean is not what it is, despite how much this student wishes it so.
"Just call it a garden party, dude, everyone's okay with that."
--Ricky Nelson, channeled by edutcher ;^)
Its not 1969 any more. Just ask the plantiff's lobby.
Isn't the demand for ID among revelers discriminatory against minorities, as well? Opponents say one problem with voter ID measures is that it is more difficult for urban minorities to get state IDs. DMV offices are inconveniently located; the paperwork & bureaucracy are too difficult for many to navigate, etc. If procuring an ID is so difficult that it's discriminatory, so is any demand for identification--from voting to buying a drink.
"It's your party you can cry if you want to..."
Back in the days when Paul Soglin was a student the party really meant something. But now that he's mayor, these new students are having meaningless parties.
The older generation's fear of the meaninglessness of the things young people do would be simply embarrassing. But they have the power to oppress and they don't seem to mind using it.
Why not have an 11 pm curfew every night? Nobody meaningful is up that late. Think of all the crime and drunkenness that could be avoided.
Why not criminalize all nonprocreative sex? Nobody meaningful goes in for that sort of thing anymore. You could avoid a lot of anguish and disease that way.
If only it was the Mifflin abortion clinic. Then those authorities would stay away.
I think it's breeder sex that's under attack. Well, taxpayers' breeder sex.
"discriminatory against the young (and...discriminatory against males)"
SOP.
I want universal voter ID laws that include a minimum requirement photo ID to vote.
One person/ one vote. Universal fairness and universal hope.
Democrats don't like that.
The cheat machine is easier when the system is ripe for fraud.
These students need to get it good and hard from their liberal democrat overlords. Might be a teachable moment.
Seeing Red wins the thread
There is nothing unusual here as the professor has come to appreciate, marinating as she has in this culture. "Progressives" are without irony and given to the removal of the rights of others. This is all for your own good.
There is nothing unusual here as the professor has come to appreciate, marinating as she has in this culture. "Progressives" are without irony and given to the removal of the rights of others. This is all for your own good.
Back when I was an undergrad at the University of Illinois in Cham-Bana, way back in the Neanderthal era of the 60s, we had very meaningful parties.
Generally, we organized the parties around these themes:
o Ditch weed (about all we had)
o Purple Owsley
o Led Zeppelin albums
o All the pretty girls we could gather up
"Pretty" was a pretty elastic term.
We meant to get stoned out of our minds, dance our asses off and convince the girls to drop their drawers for a group grope.
Talk about meaningful! It was damned near a religious experience!
Children believe alchohol is an entitlement. And 24 year olds are often children.
MPD should use a different approach. Arrest everyone who looks drunk for public intoxication.
Why are the Madison police on heightened security alert? Could it be that masses of drunks make a mess of things?
I defend Mifflin more than any event we have, not out of some misplaced adolescent desire to get hammered,
No - that's it. Group drunkenness is the best.
We used to have the "mall crawl" over Halloween, at our famous out-door street mall. It was great fun, but as the years progressed it became more of a show-up-&-get-piss-drunk-&-destroy-property-party.
Amazing what a few nasty drunks can do to ruin a good time --and cause tens of thousands of dollars in damage to store fronts in the process.
(then wiz away in your BMW)
In the past you could take the whole family. But the crowd control became outrageous. People were getting trampled.
It's fun to watch liberals lose control of what they hold dear by ruining it themselves.
Again, the solution is to have the party-people carry a clip board holding a political petition and the ACLU business card.
Ha, Us boomers thought we were special, and it turns out we are... in the fields of hypocrisy and narcissism.
The letter doesn't seem to be available. Maybe it's my browser.
They should get leaders from each side together for a meeting and be open and honest:
Students: Look, we really enjoy getting hammered and goofing off and maybe getting lucky enough to get laid.
Cops: We're with you on that, but we enjoy our authority to push you all around and a lot of people want us to do that so they can feel like the boss too.
Let's agree to have the party, you guys get drunk and all that, we will come in and mess you up a little, and next year, we do it all over again.
You students can look at the beat down like the part of the party that you can brag about later, and we'll look at the party like a reason for us to get paid overtime. Win/Win.
Maybe some of the girls could flash us a little.
If abortion clinics started serving alcohol, liberals would be outraged. "What do you think you're doing?! You're an underage pregnant girl. Give me that beer."
Liberals hate alcohol because it leads to that choice that liberals love so much.
Wake up and smell the morning-after vomit.
My college was Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. For a heathy chunk of the 80's, we were always on that infamous Playboy's top ten list of party schools for really no other reason than our Halloween celebration.
I grew up in Chicago and participated in some fairly epic shenanigans due to that fact alone, but nothing really prepared the 18-year-old me for the unbridled otherworldliness that was SIUC's Halloween celebration.
It is a thing of the past, unfortunately, as the city and the state collapsed it completely. It's all but dead. Waking up in a field with a couple hundred of your closest friends is dead. Taking over downtown until 5am is dead.
Madison...it was probably fun while it lasted, but you're probably going to have wave goodbye to your beloved uberparty.
Haha, you're on a roll, St. Croix.
5 will get you 10 the fuzz (how's that for 60s iconography?) will use Baaston as an excuse to call the whole thing off.
"Why don't we get drunk and screw
I just bought a waterbed it's filled up for me and you
They say you are a snuff queen
Honey I don't think that's true
So why don't we get drunk and screw
Yeah, now baby I say, (lord!)
Why don't we get drunk and screw?"
Song from 1973 and another generation that thought they invented sex.
Nobody meaningful is up that late.
Well, I'm not sober by that hour, in any case.
So John Waters is 23 and a senior. Maybe if he spent a little more time studying and a little less partying he would have graduated at 22 and would be a productive, tax-paying citizen by now.
If only it was the Mifflin abortion clinic. Then those authorities would stay away.
Just put up some signs, get a sofa, something to simulate stirrups, a Womyn's Study major, a Gomco gastric evacuation pump, and pretend. Behead some Tiny Tears dolls. GO THE FULL GOSNELL!!
Watch out.
The checking id's and giving out MIPs is standard policy at the universities in Michigan and I believe Indiana.
In Michigan, police stand outside bars and check id's and breathalyzer anyone that comes out. They watch for students walking at night, or for girls who have taken off their heels to walk home. They don't have to catch you in the act of drinking to ID and breathalyze.
The MIPs come with strict penalties, including requirements for ongoing "awareness" programs. Students can even be banned from getting jobs in education. My friends' daughters boyfriend had to spend time in jail because he could not afford the financial penalty. This a 20 year old who committed the unpardonable sin of walking down the street after having had alchohol.
This is not about drinking and driving. I find it appalling, and it sounds like it is headed your way.
Drunk sex is okay but it's really sad if that's all you know.
Maybe the police should check for committed relationships.
Now they can not only get drunk but can get drunk in a socially meaningful way. Mifflin drunks are the Freedom Riders of a new generation
Prohibition may work this time. Maybe.
I suggest they give the kids a spring break and a free trip to a Florida beach. That would save Madison from Badgers Gone Wild.
The cost could be deducted from the Police Dept's Budget...maybe firing the chief would help raise the money .
Maybee hits at the core of the problem. The drinking age should be 18 as it was in Wisc and Louisiana, etc., years ago until being blackmailed by the Feds. Lowering the age would go a long way to ending the march towards Fascism. One is considered an adult at 18 for everything else--can sign contracts, own a business (even a bar), etc.--so it makes no logical sense to raise the age. The answer to this "under-age" drinking crack-down by many students is to hold giant house parties on private property, but this ploy has only led to police-state tactics of local police sending under-cover agents to invade the private property-based party. Additionally, it has also led moves by State Legislatures--especially in the wake of 911--to pass legislation making possession of a false ID a felony--thus insuring that the lives of many otherwise upstanding citizens with great future potential will be ruined forever--as realistically expecting college-age people
not to drink is like ordering the seas to recede..
(PS When I attended LSU ('62-'66) the big deal was to go escape the summer heat by going to summer-school at either Wisc or to Boulder (both States then having an age 18 drinking age)--Nothing like sitting at the Student Union patio having a cool one while over-looking Lake Mendota!)
The law considers people too dumb to drink until 21 but smart enough to vote at 18 probably because the consequences of stupid drinking are more quickly apparent than those of stupid voting.
The law considers people too dumb to drink until 21 but smart enough to vote at 18 probably because the consequences of stupid drinking are more quickly apparent than those of stupid voting.
It's not easy being young, rich, and good-looking.
If you think that’s hard, try being fat, drunk and stupid.
The 23-year old journalism major who wrote this piece is at least two-thirds of the way there.
Ann - the older generation always fears the next due to the lack of GROK. That is the fear, of being made useless, obsolete in the culture.
"...not out of some misplaced adolescent desire to get hammered,..."
He says that like it's a bad thing.
"I defend Mifflin more than any event we have, not out of some misplaced adolescent desire to get hammered, but because it represents everything about this school that makes me proud to wake up a Badger."
Perhaps the students should build a large wooden badger, climb inside, and leave it out on Mifflin Street the night before.
It would totally fool the police.
Next: “If you look under 21 and have alcohol, you will be asked to provide proof of age.” It’s official, the Constitution is being thrown out that weekend. I’m 23, but people say I have a baby face, so go ahead, demand my ID — the Fourth Amendment is really more of a guideline anyway.
What does the Fourth Amendment have to do with that, exactly?
I mean, I think the drinking age should be dropped to 16 or removed entirely - but I don't see a Fourth Amendment issue with ID requirements given that laws specifying a drinking age in a State seem to be perfectly Constitutional.
What does the Fourth Amendment have to do with that, exactly?
I think he’s referring to the police asking for identification of people that they see drinking alcohol in public who based on their appearance may or may not be of legal age.
I Belong to Madison
I've been wi' a couple o' cronies,
One or two pals o' my ain;
We went in a hotel, and we did very well,
And then we came out once again;
Then we went into anither,
And that is the reason I'm fu';
We had six deoch-an-doruses, then sang a chorus,
Just listen, I'll sing it to you:
Chorus
I belong to Madison,
Dear old Madison town;
But what's the matter wi' Madison,
For it's goin' roun' and roun'!
I'm only a common old working chap,
As anyone here can see,
But when I get a couple o' drinks on a Saturday,
Madison belongs to me!
There's nothing in keeping your money,
And saving a dollar or two;
If you've nothing to spend, then you've nothing to lend,
Why that's all the better for you!
There no harm in taking a drappie,
It ends all your trouble and strife;
It gives ye the feeling that when you get home,
You don't give a hang for the wife!
Chorus
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