Last Thursday, head football coach Barry Alvarez e-mailed all 12,500 student-ticket holders and requested they “eliminate that one cheer that has been offensive.”

Less than a minute into the first quarter, guess what cheer just happened to start? You got it, the famous cheer where students yell, “eat shit” and “fuck you” to students in another section. Sometimes the cheer spreads so far that all of the students in P and O are screaming the cheer to sections M and N.

Regardless of how big the cheer can get, the cheer itself has drawn unfavorable publicity in the past few weeks.

This led to Alvarez making his plea to students, which subsequently was ignored — or was it?

Having attended approximately 20 games here at Wisconsin in the student section, I must say Saturday’s display of the cheer was the most pathetic by far.

I talked to quite a few friends about the matter, and none of us could really recall hearing the cheer in the second half of the game, which was definitely the half during which most students are the most aware of what is happening in the stadium, as the pre-party alcohol starts to wear off.

To think back, I can only remember a few times in the first half I saw hands pointing and heard voices yelling the cheer.

Should this be considered a success to coach Alvarez that he could single-handedly eliminate or reduce a time-honored cheer many, many generations have participated in?

Honestly, I don’t think so.

For some reason, I just don’t think most kids paid that much attention to his request or even really cared about the request.

I have learned that when you tell someone to do something or ask them to stop doing something, they will continue to do what they want anyway.

I think this definitely holds true for over 12,000 mostly drunk college students at a football game.

Maybe everyone was just into the game. After all, it was an entertaining game and actually meant something now that we are in the Big Ten season.

Or maybe the students were just busy goofing around and having fun taking part in all of the other traditions the student section has to offer.

Yes, some of the traditions the student section has to offer are somewhat vulgar, but many of them are not at all.

Does it really matter if every once in a while we randomly shout out some obscenities as long as we are having fun and cheering the Badgers on to victory?

The traditions in the student section are what make the games fun. As long as we are not hurting anyone, what is the difference?

Traditions are what make Camp Randall what it is. The traditions we all participate in on many Saturdays in the fall will be remembered long after someone criticizes our behavior.

At halftime, I moved from sitting with my boyfriend to sitting with my best friend Jenny and the other dozens of friends I regularly attend games with. This move put me in prime position in section P to watch another time-honored tradition: students trying to get the wave going.

I must say, not only were kids not really into doing the “eat shit, fuck you” cheer, they were definitely not interested in completing the wave cycle.

It was quite possibly the most pathetic wave experience I have had, but then again, if I remember right, the time of the game when the wave was being started was a crucial time in the game when students were trying to pay attention.

Seriously people, if you are going to start the wave, try to make sure neither team is in scoring position nor is in the middle of an important drive in the game.

Continuing on with another tradition that is not offensive is my personal favorite, the playing of “Jump Around.”

I will never hear that song again without thinking about how fun it is to go crazy to the song and jump on the bleachers and then two seconds later fall off the bleachers. At some point during the song, I usually find myself looking at the student section as a whole and thinking how cool it looks.

Another tradition found extremely fun to most students is the throwing of an object over the stadium walls. Most times the object being thrown over is a beach ball, occasionally a smaller version of an opposing team’s flag.

Being the rebel that I am, I have actually been one of the “naughty” little students who has succeeded in getting an object over, and let me tell you, I was beaming with pride and then ducking to stay out of sight of security.

Many students are as excited about throwing an object over as recovering a fumble.

For some reason, just the shear difficulty of getting something past a security guard and over the wall makes this tradition a fun mission.

I have only named a handful of traditions, but how many of them can we actually say are horrible and inappropriate?

In my opinion, none of them.

We are students, we are enthusiastic and we are just trying to have fun at a football game.

If we happen to swear a few times along the way in some of our traditions, so be it.

We are not hurting each other; we are just acting like college kids act.

Instead of bothering us about the fun times we have in the student section, remind us to get to the game on time so we can have even more fun. It will get the stadium rocking a little earlier, but it will let us have some fun.

With exams, homework, work, relationships and other commitments, we have enough to worry about. Screaming a few swear words here and there is not going make a huge difference down the line to most people except the students who are keeping their minds off of the pressures of daily life.

Let us have our traditions, our memories and even a few happy moments of yelling an obscenity at the top of our lungs without having to worrying about if we might get in trouble for it.