Thursday, November 8, 2007

“Students here just don’t feel welcome and they don’t feel accepted here.”

You think?

In all fairness to the university, I found this previously omitted detail rather, um, how shall I say ... essential to the discussion:

As part of its recognition as a student organization, the Goat Pack signed a contract acknowledging that any of its events, even fundraising ones, have to be planned and implemented in a way that there would be no harm to participants or damage to other people’s property, Roter said.

If something were to happen, the university could take disciplinary action, Roter said, which could vary on the severity of the infraction. Such actions could include probation, suspension and restitution.

Kuhn said the Goat Pack became a provisional student organization to recruit new members and have a location on campus to do planning for the event, which was the only thing regarding the pub crawl that took place on campus. After receiving the letter Monday, Kuhn pulled the Goat Pack’s paperwork because he thought the pub crawl could be considered a university event.

(emphasis added)

That's little more descriptive than "social organization" and changes the liability ramifications of the equation rather drastically. This would have been nice to know going into the discussion. A "social organization" can be four guys hanging out in an apartment on Amherst Street waxing philosophical between bong hits and rounds of Halo 3; it does not have to be something with the quasi-imprimatur of the school. This would suggest that UW-O had more discretion to assert their influence in this matter than previously thought.

Nevertheless, this incident was blown way out of proportion. If the Goat Pack was a "provisional student organization" I would assume they would have to get someone from the university to have signed-off on the pub crawl/fund-raiser. If they did not know any better, I would have hoped someone from the university would have said "Yeah, there are some legal issues here ..." once they started hearing about the event from students.

So maybe the UW-O administration, the OPD and other civic gate-keepers were a little more hands-on than I originally thought. Maybe they did try to help work with these kids and push them in the right direction. I'm perfectly willing to give them credit for trying. But the ideal end would have been an event that the entire town could have enjoyed and been proud of and not merely the cancellation of one with which many people were afraid.

Independent of what the "Running of the Goats" was going to be all about, the most telling line in the whole article has to be this:

“We just didn’t want to do it anymore because we felt unappreciated as students and that is the major problem.”

(emphasis added)

Now that this business is all over I would recommend that city leaders read this comment not as the pouting lament of a young person who has not gotten his way, but as a perceptive statement on student-civic relations that we should all be working to mend.

6 comments:

CJ said...

One simple solution would have been to make it a community event rather than a student/alumni exclusive.

A greater mix of ages might have opened up more opportunities.

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"“We just didn’t want to do it anymore because we felt unappreciated as students and that is the major problem.”
...Now that this business is all over I would recommend that city leaders read this comment not as the pouting lament of a young person who has not gotten his way, but as a perceptive statement on student-civic relations that we should all be working to mend."

Being from the "been there, done that" crowd, it's hard not to perceive the his statements as a pouty lament. But being open minded and enthusiastic about the energy and creativity of the group I ask you (Oh Great Chief and really smart guy-- I'm a fan, can you tell?) What do you suggest for starters? Help us old codgers bridge the gap.

Jb said...

In my opinion, we start with the kid who organized this thing, Ryan Kuhn. Somebody in town must have an event they need organized -- a conference, a meeting, something with the art walk, maybe even something at the high schools, whatever -- and we bring him into the fold. We say "This is what we need done, how do you think we can best do it?" Maybe it's a fund-raiser for the Museum or the Paine or EAA or something (Maybe even a sanctioned UW-O alumni mixer?).

If this kid can get 600 kids together using Facebook, he should be able to do pretty well with the conventional tools of fund-rasing and organizing. In fact, he may be able to do better by integrating the social networking capabilities of the internet with the traditional methods.

Make it an internship or even a part-time job, but recognize that this guy's demonstrating an aptitude, or at least desire, for organizing people.

Give the kid a challenge, not an obstacle. Getting people together to get loaded is not hard, getting people together to do something constructive takes a little more determination.

Get him a job at the Alumni office, or something, have him make phone calls and organize events for the sake of the university instead of in spite of it. Give him a budget and a deadline and see what he can do.

In other words, keep him occupied. Idle hands, devil's tools and all that jazz. Putting a pub crawl together screams one thing louder than anything else, "I'm bored!" Well, keep him busy, keep him interested (hopefully with something he's already demonstrated a proclivity for, in this case a community organizing) and make it worth his while.

If a college student ever came up to me and said, "I've got this great idea: I want to raise money for charity with a pub crawl!" I think I would have personally driven him down to the Oshkosh Foundation or the United Way, or whatever, and said "That is a great idea! Let these guys show you how to raise money for charity first, and then we'll talk about this pub crawl."

CJ said...

As I said before...a really smart guy. Hail to the Chief!

(I will do my part to spread the message.)

CJ said...

May I quote your suggestion in the ONW?

Jb said...

Sure, go nuts.

CJ said...

You're in there. The ONW that is. :)