Saturday, our University of Wisconsin Badger football team took on the University of Texas-El Paso Miners. The who? Exactly.

Over the course of the week leading up to the game, I watched as the tickets in the Facebook exchange zone dropped from an ambitious $55 to a dismal $20 – I also saw the occasional offer of a ticket for a bottle of alcohol. It was clear not many students desired to go to this game, for a couple reasons.

For one thing, to put it bluntly, our offense sucks, and it leads many to rants filled with choice words that could put hair on the chest of a newborn. Also, UTEP? C’mon man! Who’s next, the Youngstown State Penguins? Based on those two factors, I assumed the student section would not be at full force, but apparently the police and event staff mistook UTEP for a football powerhouse.

I arrived at the game about five minutes into the first quarter after an alarm clock malfunction. Whoops. I walked into the stadium and Section O was “full” o’course, but that’s where my friends were sitting. I took my Section P student voucher and walked to the bleachers, then began to move down the rows in an effort to avoid the event staff. I was about to cross my section of the Red Sea into the promised land of O, when all of the sudden I was face to face with a policeman whose mood could only be described as “I missed my friend’s tailgate for this nonsense, so I’m going to be a jerk.” The cop asked to see my ticket and sent me packing back to P. But the joke was on him because I later put on my best ninja impression, my red “I bleed red and white” shirt seamlessly blended into the crowd and I snuck into O on the lower level and met up with my friends.

That, readers, is called sticking it to the man.

However, 131 people were either not as stealthy or not as lucky as I was because they were ejected from Saturday’s game. In an article about the incidents in the Wisconsin State Journal, UW Police Department Sgt. Brent Gruber stated 89 of the ejected people were fans who were watching from the student section without student tickets.

Now, at a game against Michigan State University or Ohio State University – where all of the seats are to be filled – I could see why police would eject people who are not supposed to be in the student section. But at this particular game against UTEP, there were large areas reserved for students that were not occupied. Although the cops were “doing their jobs,” I think they took their authority to an inappropriate level when they actually ejected people from the game and closed off sections, forcing some fans to sit in the nosebleeds. Meanwhile, seats at an altitude not so high as to cause hemorrhaging of capillaries in the nostrils were readily available.

I believe as long as there are open seats, people should be able to sit where they want, regardless of whether they are a student. They should most certainly not be ejected for trying to be part of the great tradition that is the Red Sea. The only requirements I have for fans in the student section is that they actively participate in the wave, the fight song and chants like “Eat chips, fondue” or whatever it is. To those 131 people who got thrown out like bad bananas, don’t let the man get you down, and better luck at the next home game.

Hayes Cascia ([email protected]) is a freshman with an undeclared major.