Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once said, "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins." Known for concise judgments like this, he made the necessary distinction between idealistic "natural rights" and realistic "legal rights."
The new "show and blow" policy at Badger football games is fair, as students do not have the legal right to swing their drunken fists anywhere near the tips of sober students' noses, thanks to public intoxication laws, university policy and all-around good taste. To revise what columnist Kyle Szarzynski opined in yesterday's edition of The Badger Herald: I think I speak for, well, the entire student body when I say that students over 21 have the legal right to get wasted before the game, but don't have the legal right to attend said game until they have dried out for a while.
Rather than infringing on the freedom of the "shitfaced" at Camp Randall, the Offices of the Dean of Students is simply making up for years of lax law enforcement. They are finally recognizing the right of sober students to not have to deal with their inebriated and "exceedingly rowdy" fellow students, at least at Camp Randall. Students who approve of the "show and blow" policy may or may not be a minority, but popularity is irrelevant once a new policy or law takes effect. Whatever their intentions, if the Offices of the Dean of Students want to crack down on student behavior, you had better cooperate or find somewhere else to go on Saturdays. Sure, you could protest the new policy, but your argument wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
Nothing about football games is compulsory; the students here choose to attend the University of Wisconsin, and they choose to buy ticket vouchers for the student section, knowing their attendance is conditional on behavior. They give up the right to show up with over 0.08 percent alcohol content if they've been ticketed before, they retain the right to complain about it, and they never had the right to break university rules at home games, "tradition" notwithstanding. No one has lost the right to "a little bit of harmless partying," as Mr. Szarzynski described it. In fact, the new policy ensures that partying remains as harmless as possible by limiting it to private settings. You want to have your intoxicated cake and eat it, too? Get shitfaced and watch the game on TV. Get rowdy and crowd-surf, if you want. If a "mellow intoxication" were just that, we wouldn't have restrictions on alcohol use to begin with, let alone suddenly decide to enforce them.
I am certain this fact is an annoying one in the context of "UW tradition," a concept I put in quotes because of its flexible meanings. Who says the reputation of a party school is a good quality to preserve? The city of Madison doesn't seem to think so — the invention of Halloween Freakfest 2006 and the (misguided) Alcohol Density Plan both indicate that the locals have had it with downtown drunkenness.
Likewise, the Offices of the Dean of Students is taking steps toward what they believe is best for UW tradition — a future wherein alcohol is not such a large element of game day culture. They are looking forward to a day when the students who attend football games go because they love football, not because they expect a quasi-riot to keep themselves entertained for a few hours. Bottom line: The right to party ends at the tip of UW property.
Interestingly, on a philosophical level, it is contradictory to demand the freedom to be intoxicated while simultaneously taking pride in UW's party culture. Jean-Paul Sartre — a onetime friend of Albert Camus — believed that you cannot be truly free if you allow the perceptions of others to define your identity. If you consider yourself to be free, you will not care if other schools now think less of UW's excessive ways; you will "possess only yourself," as Camus wrote, and thus imbibe on your own terms. Meanwhile, those of us who care about the UW's evolving reputation will strive to create a new one based on things like high achievement, valuable research and quality education. As the saying goes, "Here’s to beer, women, song, and practical arguments — may none of them be flat."
Carla Dogan ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in economics.
