OPINION & EDITORIAL
The Halloween dilemma, the nightmare that is ASM, Southworth and more
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Also by Matt Modell:
- Taking responsibility for your decisions (April 24, 2003)
- Fixing the problems of ASM (November 25, 2003)
- The key word is 'illegal' (December 4, 2003)
- Feingold-McCain 'Incumbent Protection Plan' fails (November 13, 2003)
- A fond farewell to UW (December 11, 2003)
Related Stories:
- Halloween, take 2 (October 30, 2001)
- Let Halloween fall where it may (October 9, 2003)
- Halloween in November this year (October 7, 2002)
- What happens in Madison stays in Madison (October 29, 2004)
- Happy Halloween (October 21, 2001)
by Matt Modell
Thursday, October 10, 2002
Halloween
The big debate in Madison is when to celebrate Halloween. Do students celebrate the weekend prior, which is five days before Halloween, or the weekend immediately following, which pushes the celebrations into November?
The choice is clear … both. The weekend before is a must-celebrate weekend because with daylight-savings time, we get an extra hour at the bars Saturday night—hardly an event to pass on. We should then dress up Thursday night, the actual night of Halloween, because we can take advantage of the great drink specials. We should continue to celebrate that weekend, because it is the closest weekend to Oct. 31.
Why dress up for Halloween only one or two nights, when we could dress up four or five nights? Not only will this mean more huge parties and wild nights that are sure to annoy the administration and foil their efforts to end drinking, but we may be able to get attention from the Princeton Review and move our way back into the top three party schools in America.
After all, since we lost in football and our Rose Bowl hopes are all but gone, we may as well be known as America’s greatest partygoers.
Southworth
Scott Southworth’s lawsuit against the Board of Regents and seg fees (student taxes) ran into trouble when Chicago’s 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week ruled against him. The Court said that, on paper, the system is “viewpoint neutral.”
Everyone who loves seg fees says (with a wink) that the system is viewpoint neutral, and every conservative’s hope that seg fees would be eliminated immediately has had his or her hopes dashed.
The system is not neutral and never will be neutral. The new test is whether Student Judiciary will uphold SSFC’s decisions to deny eligibility to organizations that violate the rules. MEChA violated regent policy papers, and it looks like it may still be given another hearing; we will see what happens.
ASM—what a mess!
So everyone is suing everyone. I count at least 10 lawsuits this semester.
Groups are suing those SSFC members cutting seg fees, the liberals on the committee sued the conservatives, the conservatives are suing the liberals, students are even suing a member of Student Judiciary who it clearly appears is illegally serving on the court.
He has been involved in most of the decisions thus far, so the result of the suit should mean the cases that have proceeded will have to be done over, or another Southworth-type case will likely be filed in federal court proving there is no real check on the system.
The slim liberal majority running ASM is accusing the conservatives of skipping meetings—even though almost everyone was legitimately excused—for political gain. Let us forget that if all the liberals had shown up to these meetings they would have had quorum.
What it comes down to is this:
If you believe all the student services offered on campus are beneficial to students, you don’t mind tuition going up and believe that diversity is the most important issue on campus, then no question—vote for members of the REACH slate in ASM’s “mid-term” elections next week.
If you believe many of the student “services” may not be services, think student taxes are too high and want your student government to continue to focus on expanding library hours—part of Memorial Library is already open 24 hours a day thanks to lobbying efforts—and save drink specials, then voting for the Badger Party is the only logical choice.
If you don’t care if tuition goes up and you could care less about diversity, library hours and drink specials, then stay as far away from the nightmare that is ASM. It is a circus anyway.
U.S. Senate
Democrats, in a desperate political move, have forced Senator Robert Torricelli, D-New Jersey, out of his re-election bid in an effort to maintain control of the U.S. Senate. If they succeed, it will only mean further endangering our federal court system.
Tom Daschle and other leading Democrats will not even allow the president’s judicial nominees to receive hearings in front of the entire U.S. Senate.
Expect the November elections to be as tight as the 2000 presidential race. Republicans will pick up two seats in the Senate to regain a slim majority. They will lose a couple seats, but will retain the House, and our federal courts will finally be able to have vacancies filled with fair, responsible and qualified judges.
Alvarez Letter
Football season-ticket holders last week received an e-mail from UW football coach Barry Alvarez asking students to discontinue the “fuck you, eat shit” cheer during games.
Students have been doing this cheer for as long as I can remember, and hopefully students will not change a strong tradition of showing off our Midwestern vulgarity.
The pride of Bucky says, “Sorry Barry, we love ya, but we aren’t giving up any of our spirit.” That cheer is as much of a tradition as pre-partying before football games.
Enjoy!
I hope everyone has a wild, but safe, Halloween. I wish I could be there for the partying. Don’t forget, though, the clown is apparently a racist costume, so pick something more politically correct.
—Matt Modell (mmodell@badgerherald.com) is a senior majoring in journalism and political science. He is in Washington, D.C. this fall for an internship.
