U of I Picks PR Over Safety
Check out today’s Daily Illini editorial. They make a great point. This is just the latest potentially disastrous bad call by Chancellor Richard Herman who values public relations over sound policy, and in this case, over student safety. Wouldn’t a better policy be making it clear to all students in the dorms that they will be held responsible for the actions of their guests, and telling them police will be called immediately if there is disruptive activity in the dorms? Perhaps Chancellor Herman is following the perennially short-sighted advice of Housing Director Jack Collins, but the buck stops with Chancellor Herman. His first charge is keeping the students at the university safe. I hope if there is a rise in injuries, sexual assaults, or fatalities, that Chancellor Herman is held responsible.
Comment by Evan on 27 February 2008 at 9:21 am:
Haha, your advice is too simple and full of common sense for the administration here. One of the worst and most poorly carried out decisions by some of the dolts calling the shots around here.
It’s a ridiculous policy anyways, but especially as one of the few people here who doesn’t drink alcohol, I would have been absolutely enraged if I had had plans for this weekend with a friend from out of town or a sibling.
Comment by illinikc33 on 27 February 2008 at 9:21 am:
Yeah, this is a horrible move, especially letting the students know, well, less than a week before the actual event. Stupid.
Comment by JAL on 27 February 2008 at 10:20 am:
I don’t care about the students either. I could be very good at taking their money and running with it. What does it take to be an administrator on this campus?
>;p
Comment by kofi the did anyone really expect anything better from a government institution? on 27 February 2008 at 10:39 am:
If you are a person who does not drink or does not want to participate in Unofficial, any plans you have with friends or siblings will have always involved getting together somewhere other than Champaign. Especially in dorms where the odds are your room mate will be stumbling in and out all day and night.
As for the timing of the announcement, it’s 100% intended to piss off and inconvenience students and their guests. One of the biggest complaints by University and city admins is the ‘tourism’ aspect.
But yes, the administration is retarded. This is hardly the first time. It will hardly be the last. Yea bureaucracies.
Comment by Unoffical guy on 27 February 2008 at 11:18 am:
If the student government were worth a damn they would stand up to this.
To bad the ISS President is in the pocket of Richard Herman
Comment by Evan on 27 February 2008 at 12:40 pm:
If you are a person who does not drink or does not want to participate in Unofficial, any plans you have with friends or siblings will have always involved getting together somewhere other than Champaign. Especially in dorms where the odds are your room mate will be stumbling in and out all day and night.
I’m not so sure about that. While that’s my plan, there have already been a couple of letters to the editor and comments on the DI website over the past couple of days that would suggest otherwise.
Also, the “ban” lasts from February 29 - March 2, well past the “meat” of Unofficial.
Whatever. At this point, I probably shouldn’t even be surprised anymore by any of this stuff. It’ll be interesting to see what Herman says if there end up being some of the unintended consequences mentioned by Augur and that editorial.
Comment by Augur on 27 February 2008 at 12:47 pm:
He will blame the bars, b/c he’s great in his own eyes and never to blame for anything.
If he cant control campustown and keep people safe, we need a chancellor who can.
Comment by Anonymous on 27 February 2008 at 1:13 pm:
I thought the DI editorial was childish. The housing policy for the weekend is designed to discourage visitors during “unofficial” weekend. If you don’t participate in “unofficial” you probably wouldn’t have visitors that weekend anyway since it is nearly impossible to avoid the drunken mayhem caused by the party. Here’s a newsflash to college students, once you get out in the real world, you will have different authorities telling you what to do all the time, (i.e. your boss, your spouse, your governement, etc.) Deal with it and quit whining.
Comment by tet on 27 February 2008 at 1:49 pm:
The Champaign City Council was very, very close to banning alcohol sales for a full week prior to the event. Considering that 70% or so of the arrests made last year were of out-of-towners, it is quite possible that if there’s serious problems this year, they’re going to crack down, hard.
There is a precedent for this–From 1976 to 1986 or so, there was an “unofficial” Hash Wednesday on the Quad. At the height of its popularity, there were close to two thousand participants. One year, the University decided that it was going to end, so they lined all of their police officers at one end of the Quad and arrested anyone that they found holding or smoking. You don’t think that the City of Champaign and the University can stop this if they really wanted to?–Think again.
Stuff like this is only fun until someone pokes an eye out. Inviting hundreds of out-of-towners with no vested interest in keeping CU safe or happy is not a formula for a good time.
My guess is that this will be the next to last year that it occurs, if not the last.–Hell, one of your law school professors wrote to the State asking that emergency measures be taken to prevent its occurance.
Tom
Comment by Augur on 27 February 2008 at 1:54 pm:
Anon, there’s more to it than that. If they wanted to deter people, they should have announced the policy sooner.
There are other truisms, like kids drinking at a bar are less likely to fight, and hurt themselves, or say, get sexually assaulted, than those at a frat party. For the university to figure out a way to close down the bars would be a bad policy choice if all of the drinkers would just go to house parties, for instance.
What the DI is arguing, that I agree with, is that people are safer in the dorms than they will be if thrown out drunk in the middle of the night b/c they don’t have I cards.
That’s the policy debate at issue. I think Herman is probably smart enough to know this makes people less safe, but it looks like he’s being tough. And I firmly believe he is principally motivated by public relations concerns.
Another example that comes to mind, last year he sent letters to parents of underage drinkers (who were over 18) this violated the campus policy on parental notification, but he didn’t care. When pressed about why it was done, he said it was to deter under age drinking on unofficial, but the policy wasn’t announced until after unofficial. How is it supposed to deter people after the fact?
Comment by illinikc33 on 27 February 2008 at 2:02 pm:
If they really wanted to deter people, they would to what Tom said; line the streets with cops armed w/ breathalysers and arrest anyone underage that blows more than 0.0. What he is doing with this absurd rule will cause much more harm than good.
Comment by Anonymous on 27 February 2008 at 2:59 pm:
Tet, I believe the last year in question may have been 1990.
I was in full retro-hippie regalia but freshly showered and obviously clean as a whistle, so they glanced at my id and let me go.
Nope, wasn’t smoking anything funny; I’m most foully allergic to most things that burn, so I was just there for the atmosphere (hanging around resolutely upwind).
The alcohol ban would have a much more significant impact. So would spot checks of the intoxicated on the street.
Don’t get me started on what a joke dorm checks will be. I was one of the people who helped to conduct such checks in the ‘non-visiting’ girls dorm. I think I warned one guy, once. He was standing in the hallway in his underpants. If they’re relying on student employees to do those checks… they won’t be checking.
Comment by Augur on 27 February 2008 at 3:18 pm:
I had one short semester working in the dorms, about the time I worked for Tom. I was almost as useless as a dorm security worker as I was at being a lab assistant, which tom can attest, is a very low bar.
One night we were walking around in the basement of Taft, by the 6 pack and I saw a guy with a slip and slide on the concrete floor pouring cheap vodka on the slip and slide. he and his friends were in swimming suits and running and sliding into the wall on the slip in slide. All were obviously smashed.
I went up to him w/ my flashlight, and I asked, so have you been out drinking. He said “No sir, I’ve been at the church all night playing bingo.” We slipped and slid with him, and gave him an “as you were” and departed.
Comment by Anonymous on 27 February 2008 at 4:00 pm:
Augur,
Maybe they should have posted the dorm ban sooner, but if what you say is true, (about it not being enforced by the “dorm police”), then your scenario of drunk out-of-towners being thrown out on the street is a non-issue. With the visitor ban in place, although it was only announced a week ago, the U of I has covered their behinds should something happen and a lawsuit if filed.
Comment by Augur on 27 February 2008 at 8:23 pm:
Anon, I disagree. B/c most students will figure they are shrew enough to slip their friends in. I’d approach the policy using a very simple test:
does this policy advance safety on campus? for the reasons I specified and for those in the di editorial, I think this policy will increase fights (drunks w/ no where to go)(potentially w/ dorm workers), increase arrests, increase injuries, increase sexual assaults, and possibly lead to a fatality. I see very little gained by it.
Richard Herman only gives a damn about what kind of press he’s getting.