You can’t do Madison in a day. Most can’t even do Madison in four years, often sticking around for a fifth or even a sixth if they’re so ambitious. With all of the red and white sporting events, stale Keystone Light parties and remarkable people everywhere you look, it’s difficult to figure out how to spend your tenure here outside of class.
Luckily, our dear friends at The Badger Herald and Elitedaily.com put it upon themselves to compile lists of 45-50 activities to cross off your “Bucky List.” These activities have apparently all been “tested and approved” by current and former Badgers. Some items on the Herald’s list are obvious, such as 13: Take a nap in College Library or 5: Drink a fishbowl at Wando’s. Others, like 34: Pregame a final exam and 47: Swim at a nude beach, provide activities for the more courageous faithful red.
One activity that caught my eye, which graced both the Herald’s 2010 list (2) as well as the list posted this fall by Elite Daily (18), was to sneak into Camp Randall and stargaze from the 50-yard line. What a great idea for a divine starlit evening, right?
This idea hid in the back of my mind until catalytic amounts of alcohol provoked it forward. One fateful night last October, my two friends, Tony and Cam, and I were passing by the stadium around 1 a.m. and decided to give it a go.
After devising a drunken plan to infiltrate the stadium, we climbed up a few dumpsters on the southeast side of the stadium, hopped the fence and were seemingly home free. We nonchalantly strolled through the halls of Camp Randall, searching for a gate to the field. Then, I saw a blinking red light in the corner of my eye. I froze in my tracks, coming to my senses, seeing dozens of blinking red lights. All of them cameras. All of them recording my every move.
“GUYS!” I shout-whispered, “WE GOTTA GO!” I sprinted back to the fence, somehow managing to boost myself over it and hide in a bush a quarter-mile away. When I peeked out of the bush, Tony and Cam were nowhere to be found.
They had pressed onward, tiptoeing around the stadium until they finally found a golden gate to the promised land. A gate accompanied by a pair of Madison’s finest.
“Hey, do you know where the exit is?” Cam said to the approaching policemen, attempting to outsmart or at least confuse them.
“Well, the exit is that way,” responded one of the men in blue.
“Yeah, that’s where terrorists get out,” piped in the other one. Yes, my friends were not only caught drunkenly trespassing on the hallowed grounds of Camp Randall, but were now being questioned for terrorism. This is the point where I’m guessing Cam and Tony did all they could to not poop themselves.
“You know that 80,000 people sit in these stands every Saturday, right? We’ve got this place surrounded by 30 policemen. You’re not exiting anywhere.” This is the point where I’m guessing they pooped themselves.
The police then went on to explain that my friends and I were just a few of the many idiots who try to live out their football dreams every weekend. They had already caught multiple other offenders earlier in the evening and were expecting more after bar close. For the safety of the Badger faithful, they couldn’t just let random individuals into the stadium. So they slapped my homies with underage tickets and hefty fines, then sent them off to view the stars from a different location.
I guess the moral of the story is one I’ve learned many times already in my young life: Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. Perhaps it was just bad timing for me and my crew; perhaps we were not as sneaky as our predecessors. Or, perhaps drinking stupendous amounts of PBR and trespassing in a Division I football stadium is as dumb of an idea as it sounds. Nevertheless, my advice to my fellow Badgers is to not attempt to check off this Bucky List item. Well, only unless “Be questioned for terrorism” and “Get smashed by the firm hammer of the law” are also on your list. In that case, best of luck to you; your fallen brothers will be cheering you on from the sidelines… Well, not actually from the sidelines, but you know what I mean.
