So, Lakeshore won the Battle of Bascom a second time, huh?

What a surprise. Leave it to Southeast dorms to use Pickett’s Charge as a model for military success. I mean, for god’s sake, Lincoln’s sitting right there!

Oh, but I know what you’ll say: “Who cares? Southeast is baller. Lakeshore is full of castrated, tea-sipping, World of Warcraft fan boys who spend half their time making arts and crafts out of pieces of foliage and the other half taking courses on Harry Potter’s impact on the global economy because they’re too scared of the buildings over three stories. Southeast has hella booze.”

First off, that was basically just noise. Secondly, this is Madison: Everything has booze. Lake Mendota is just one massive, poorly made batch of moonshine. (Although, it will fuck you up. Try it!)

The Southeast dorms are the sum of their parts. Three parts vodka, one part freshman and two parts “freedom” comes out to an IQ of about 93.

I blame it on the old Ogg Hall –13 stories of luxury cockroach motels with square-shaped floors, and both towers with one odd-floor elevator almost made you dumber just looking at it. And don’t forget the years of trauma and brain damage as a result of the football player sex moans. The least they could have done was put out a velvet rope.

But when that poorly designed testament to Americanizing by-the-numbers Soviet construction came tumbling down (on to cars, in some cases), there was no shortage of ignorance (or rats — they initially migrated to Smith for those spacious bathrooms) to spread across those bright, froshy faces.

Yeah, they’ve got tons of booze ready at their disposal. And bless their little hearts, they’re quite ready to donate it right into the drain as soon as they get it — usually by strategically placing wop in every visible corner of their room as a house fellow walks by an open door. (It’s understandable — they were busy gambling in someone else’s room with stolen tables while smoking pot!)

But I know what you’re saying now: “But Smathers, all kids are idiots! I mean, look at you!”

Yes. And I lived in Ogg. AND Sellery. There is a connection. (And Towers, but that was only because I felt I wasn’t alienated enough.)

Yeah, I know Lakeshore has that ho-hum “On Golden Pond” atmosphere that’s more accustomed to retired Upers than college students. It’s just that Southeast has an atmosphere too — an invisible yet pungent bubble of residual Charter coal plant soot, frat boy Jager belches and runoff grease from Juston Stix. Oh, and whatever chemicals were released when Ogg came down.

Plus, at least Lakeshore’s smaller dorms have the charm of awkward space constraints and errant woodland creatures. You ever been to Susan B. Davis House? You probably haven’t unless you are one of the 30 unlucky fools who either greeted Chancellor Biddy Martin with a swift kick to the face upon arrival or transferred in from UW-Superior to major in kinesiology, because these rooms were meant as detox centers, not living quarters. When you have to specify that you don’t want the “regular single” instead of the 7.5-by-13-foot “small single,” you may as well camp out in an air vent in Humanities and beg for death — there are no friends here. In cinderblock housing, no one can hear you whine.

It’s hard to take all of this at once. You’ve been in party central for two years; you have the Kohl Center, U Square and State Street within reach. How could it be all that bad?

Sorry to break it to you kids, but you do realize Chadbourne is your territory, right, brah?

Jason Smathers ([email protected]) is a first-year graduate student majoring in journalism.