Death by a thousand administrators!
No college experience is complete without at least a little Animal House excess. The statute of limitations having expired years ago, the Head Groundskeeper recalls Harvey Roesler’s Wapatoolie parties. (Harvey was one of our predecessors as editor of the student newspaper and a legend at UW-Oshkosh.)
Pour whatever Boone’s Farm, MD20, and Mateus Rosé wine you have on hand into a bucket for liquid refreshments. That’s your “wapatoolie.” Toke some Maui Wowie. Throw some Jimi on the turntable. Now the pièce de résistance: a string of plastic bread wrappers knotted together and suspended from the ceiling over a washtub of water. Light the contraption on fire. As the blaze works its way up it strobes at each knot while making a WUP WUP sound.
Our own son et lumière on the (student off-campus housing) cheap! Harvey called it the WUP WUP bird. Good wholesome (fire code unapproved) fun! (Later on in life, your scribe went to work for Gov. Tommy Thompson, before descending into the ignominy of on-line blogging.)
Words like ‘swell’ and ‘so’s yer old man’
The music was better then and so was the fun. The Head Groundskeeper is old enough to remember all-American panty raids! Pity today’s college student, too many of them majoring in Grievance Studies, flagellating themselves like medieval mendicants on the bramble path to under-employment and bottomless debt. (Vote Democrat!) Woke school administrators are proving H.L. Mencken right! Today’s Puritans fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.
As in misogynist Iran, there is nascent resistance on American campuses. Consider prestigious Stanford University. Student newspaper there did its own J’Accuse! exposing “Stanford’s War on Fun.”
The Stanford marching band’s mascot is not an animal like the UW’s Bucky Badger but a tree of indeterminate species, anthropomorphized with bug eyes and wearing a hat. At the school’s homecoming football game, the Tree unfurled a 40-foot banner reading “Stanford Hates Fun.” The school proved the point by firing the mascot. Thereupon, a student magazine staged a photo of the Tree splayed out on the sidewalk, like a State Street derelict, next to a liquor bottle and a giant cigarette. Headline, “Tree Gets Axed; Found Trunk in Public.”
The felled tree is not a one-off. Stanford Administrators this year published a 13-page index of forbidden words. (“Content Warning: This website contains language that is offensive or harmful. Please engage with this website at your own pace.”) One example: Even if you are a recent hire, do not call yourself “the low man on the totem pole.” Why? Because the term “trivializes something that is sacred to Indigenous peoples,” Stanford scolds.
It gets worse. The Wall Street Journal reports that Stanford began mandating students file an application two weeks ahead of a party. The application must list attendees along with “sober monitors.” Fret not. Stanford’s “associate vice provost of inclusion, community and integrative learning” says the school is working to address students’ concerns about Stanford’s social atmosphere. The Wall Street Journal adds:
The party-planning process will be streamlined and more administrators will be hired to help facilitate student social life.
The floggings will continue until morale improves!
Blaska’s Bottom Line: This is what conservatives and, especially, libertarians mean when they say they want less government. Fewer rules and regulations. Fewer administrators. More freedom. More fun!
Education
Blaska Policy Werkes 
Stanford had 15,750 non-teaching employees in Fall, 2021. In fairness, 1,108 were service and maintenance employees, and 1,603 were employed at the National Accelerator Lab. The rest support 2,288 teaching faculty and 7,645 undergraduate students.
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At U-Mas in 1971, I was leaving for the year (and for good, student teaching Spring & last semester). I invented the “Hall Party.” I took several bottles of fortified wine, sherry, port, etc. into the hall with some plastic glasses. I unscrewed the over head bulb and sat down to enjoy my wine. Soon I was joined by a few friends. Eventually there were at least 30 students sitting in a darken hall enjoying wine or whatever. The party was approved by no one, but we all had fun. today we’d probably be expelled.
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In West Texas, we called them Harry Buffalo Parties, Wapatoolie Parties in Denver, but the recipe was the same. A large plastic tub with concord grape juice concentrate, ice and whatever was brought in (no beer.) Amazingly drinkable.
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You are making me thirsty!
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Today’s college administrators (and a sizeable number of professors) are the direct descendants of prissy old-maid Victorian schoolmarms who stayed up late at night cutting out the naughty words from the dictionary so their students wouldn’t be exposed to ‘smut.’ If I were a student at Stanford, I would recite this list of forbidden words on the quad at high noon in my loudest voice and continue to do so every day until the fools who dreamed up this list were shamed into recognizing that free speech rights do not stop at the gates to that once-illustrious institution. I wonder how long it will take UW-Madison to come out with its own even more comprehensive version of this list just to show that nobody can beat them when it comes to virtue-signaling antics.
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All the UW has to do is copy the list of banned words that Vos and Co. published. Easy.
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When lefties publish lists of forbidden words, they’re lauded for protecting the delicate sensibilities of the downtrodden and ‘marginalized’ (a category that includes everyone but straight white males). When right-wingers publish their lists, they’re accused of hate speech. If it weren’t for double standards, the left would have no standards at all.
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I didn’t say anything about left or right. Just offered the UW a time saving shortcut.
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You need not play STOOPID here, a Lazy @$$ Blogge Idiot‘s body of work speaks for itself.
And the COLORING BOOK beckons…
The Gotch
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The Lazy @$$ Blogge Idiot ‘Mo ought refrain from soliciting homosexual attention on a family-oriented blogge.
Not that there’s anything WRONG_WITH_THAT…
The Gotch
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The (IMO) Mother of all UN-preapproved post HS episodes of Bacchanalian Excess was Tornado Watch, held in Carson Park (a 134 acre peninsula surrounded by Half Moon Lake along the Chippewa River) in Eau Claire, WI, held in order to welcome the anticipated beginning of Spring.
It was described (in a decidedly understated manner) by a student newspaper writer as “eight hours (of) a bewildering barrage of frisbees, rock bands, pitcher after pitcher of beer, joints and general anarchy.”
The Gotch doesn’t remember any frisbees…or much else for that matter, other than two (2) semis filled with half barrels, capable…um…distributors up to the task of dispensing copious amounts of Barley Pop from two (2) elevated stages, and (with the trees not yet leafed out) not much privacy for…er…relief (availed by both X-n-Y Chromosomal Units) in the nearby woods.
Pitcher half full?
Unlike most dorm/house parties, the liquid refreshments never ran out; no little feat considering the many, many hundreds of thirsty attendees.
The Gotch
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There’s only 4 people in this world who cares about what you have to say and they are all on this blog. Put on your CPAC and get some rest.
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The laughably illiterate, 75 year-old Lazy @$$ Blogge Idiot should enroll in ESL classes.
#PitiablyIgnorant!
The Gotch
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Ah, the old Wapatoolie parties. We used to get the “orange drink machine” from McDonalds. They let people check them out for thing like “kids birthday parties.” It was interesting to see the colors of the liquid change as the party progressed. One thing we learned, Southern Comfort spoiled the batch.
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These sort of parties still made appearances in my college days, but the Wap tub was usually overshadowed by a handful of Milwaukee’s Best kegs, dozens of Jell-O shots spiked with bottom shelf vodka, and a jug of Jack Daniel’s or Captain Morgan passed around the revelers. My average bottle of evening dram now costs well more than an average keg back then.
So glad I escaped university life before wokester and born-again Puritan administrators really sunk their talons into student conduct. The days I remember seem so much better and more fulfilling (dont they always?).
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After reviewing Stanford’s list of forbidden words, I’m reminded of George Carlin’s monologue on euphemisms.
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Carlin was poking fun at the petty hypocrisies of bourgeoise society. Stanford, like all self-righteous, self-appointed champions of public morality, can’t muster up enough of a sense of humor to recognize its own petty hypocrisies. We desperately need another Carlin–and another Menken.
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Talk about “humor”. Boebert’s gun themed restaurant went out of business and the space is now the home of a MEXICAN RESTAURANT! Now that’s some funny s#$t.
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Want some funny s#$t?
WaPo columnist Jonathan Capehart: Kamala Harris Had An EXCELLENT 2022
The kicker?
He was serious!
Ah Lefty; so MUCH hypocrisy, so little time!
The Gotch
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So who cares what some right wing douchbag has to say? If I want crap I”ll just read tRump tweets.
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Take the Washington Post seriously? I’d sooner take a lecture on smart investing from Bernie Madoff seriously.
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“Take the Washington Post seriously?”
The Gotch is firmly with you on that, MTR!
“I’d sooner take a lecture on smart investing from Bernie Madoff seriously”
Heh! Lifelong Lefty, he!
Juuuuust like the Lazy @$$ Blogge Idiot.
The Gotch
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Anyone who laughably believes that Über Lefty rag WaPo generally, and Über Lefty columnist Jonathan Capehart specifically, are rightwing d*****bags is in the lead for Stoopidest Person on Mother Gaia.
The Lazy @$$ Blogge Idiot laughably believes that Über Lefty rag WaPo generally, and Über Lefty columnist Jonathan Capehart specifically, are rightwing d*****bags.
Solve for X…
The Gotch
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Late 1960’s Point was a ball of fun. Watching the ‘sefis pledge plays in front of the old Union (Lee “Red Vest” Dreyfus even took part), Iverson Park full contact frisbee, Old Milwauke for $.69 a sixer from Charlies, or rusty cans of Black Label and a case of Ripple from South Point. Any evening at Little Joes (“Largest Urinals in Town”) listening to Janis. But the buzz kill was the night after Kent State. That got ugly and kinda ended the fun that spring.
But I have to say that today life in the dorms is a lot less restrictive than when I was there. I was a little concerned dropping off our daughter freshman year. But she survived unscathed. And the food was much better.
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