Dear Mom and Dad:
I'm writing you this letter in a newspaper because that silly library printer ran out of paper again. I know it sucks, but at least I got a spot at the computer lab this time. Last week, I had to shove a freshman in a wheelchair away just for access to a machine.
Anyway, I wanted to ask you for some money.
Well, a lot of money.
It's really not my fault. You see, the university has decided to use $25,000 of students' cash to fund a new city position, the Madison Bar Czar.
To be fair, the city council dubbed this job an Alcohol Policy Coordinator. This person's main duty will be to issue more drinking-related tickets at bars and house parties, primarily to UW students. And this comes after the Madison City Council just raised alcohol fines by hundreds of dollars!
No Ma, I don't want your money to pay off tickets. In fact, I'll be 21 by the time this Bar Czar comes to power.
Instead, I'd like to replace the money the university threw away. If 25 grand goes toward issuing tickets to typical college students for typically nonviolent college student behavior, I'd like to give the university some cash to put toward something that makes sense. Like a new poli sci course on small-scale political corruption.
See Pops, they're all in cahoots. The city and the university are targeting us students for the same reason senior guys hit on freshmen girls. We've got what they want and we don't know any better.
You guys gotta believe me. This Alcohol Monster isn't going to scare students away from chugging a bottle of Fleischman's. (I think Mr. Fleischman can take care of that himself.)
What's really going on is a bad case of abstinence education that we're paying for.
It's sad enough some unfortunate folks still feel like they have to accompany skeezy strangers to abandoned warehouses for unprotected sex, but now they're going to be heading back to those same places for a swig of beer.
You were in college, you know. Such tactics won't keep the young adults sans PBR. Instead, it will push them out of safer drinking zones into back- alley puddles where they'll barf on themselves while rats gnaw at their frostbitten fingers.
It is getting cold.
But at least the city will squeeze some more money out of us students.
And I'm sure they'll shoot some of that cash back towards the university eventually.
So if you could just send a few thousand the university's way now, I'd really appreciate it. Maybe then I could use a university computer without having to fight over the mouse with a scrawny freshman. Them kids are scrappy.
Love,
Emily
Emily Winter is a junior majoring in sociology and journalism. Her column runs every Tuesday in The Daily Cardinal. She can be reached at ewinter@wisc.edu.
