This weekend has all the possibilities to become another one of those “memorable” weekends at Ohio State. The Spring Game, Heritage Festival and everyone’s favorite party – Chittfest – are all expected to take place this weekend. Everything is in place for a good, old-fashioned mess.
I love it.
Let’s talk a little bit about Chittfest.
Chittfest is nothing more than a bunch of crazy kids trying to have a good time. When you think about it, there’s not much difference between Chittfest and the parties that take place on Lane Avenue before a football game (other than about a few thousand people).
It’s all right for everyone to walk the streets drunk and partying before a football game. It’s perfectly fine that more underage people drink there than anywhere else on campus. And it’s all because the street is closed down for the day.
But take a normal street that isn’t closed down – Chittenden, for example – turn one block of it into a party, and you’ve got more National Guardsmen on hand than in all of the Middle East.
I don’t know where the Columbus Division of Police received their training, but after last year’s incident, I began thinking that it was from the Kentucky Backwoods Militia. There was no excuse then (and there is still no excuse) for the police department spraying tear gas like it was going out of style.
I’m positive that 10 or 15 officers walking up and down the street writing tickets would have been much more effective than having the World Champion Teargas Sharp-shooting Team practice on students.
When are the university and the city going to realize that we’re students? We’re young, we’re stupid, and sometimes we just don’t care. All we want to do is have fun. Society puts way too much emphasis on us as young adults to act mature and responsible.
Newsflash: You tore down all of our bars, you make us pay a new fee every day, we have no parking spaces, our books cost almost as much as our education, and some people still actually have classes on Friday.
Try treating us with some respect – we’ll see what we can do.
Until then, don’t bust up our parties.
So what if cars can’t get down one block of one street. If a person sees a few hundred people in the middle of the street, and he still drives down it, he deserves to get his car tipped over. Give him a beer. He’ll get some money from his insurance.
Now, I don’t condone destruction, and I would probably be pretty mad if my car got tipped over, but I could live with it if people would just let us act our age. We’ve got the rest of our lives to act responsible; let us enjoy ourselves for a while.
In reality, we only get four (or for some people, six or seven) years to have a good time. You can’t really get away with anything in high school, and you’ve got too much other stuff to worry about when you’re in the “real world,” so you should be able to live it up while you’re in college.
Being responsible in college is nothing more than making it to at least half or your classes, paying your bills no more than five days late, paying one out of seven parking tickets and remembering where you live after you leave the bar.
If responsibility has another definition, I don’t want to know it.
If I was a betting man, I would put $20 down that this year’s Chittfest will go much more smoothly than last year’s. Some of this will have to do with students knowing what will happen if they get too out of control, and hopefully some of it will have to do with the police realizing that NWA never was or never will be performing live at 43 Chittenden Ave.
So, my advice to all of the potential party-goers this weekend is to have fun, be safe and act “responsible.” But if you see RoboCop walking down the street, run.
Erik Bussa is a senior in agricultural communications. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].
