Recent occurrences taint Purdue's image

If you're a Purdue student and you're bored, you obviously haven't been paying attention in the last week.

Interesting and alarming things are abounding. As the weather heats up, so are some major issues. If you don't feel like getting involved, at least feel like stopping to read for a minute.

Rather than get angry letters about how I mishandled one topic this week, I decided I'd mishandle three of my favorite topics this week and see just how riled up folks would get.

BIG BROTHER IS SURFING

Last week, the Purdue Police posted a Web site with blurry pictures of students doing something. It's part of a new contest where students can look at distorted pictures of their friends and themselves, and if they can figure out which of the 39,000 students is depicted, they can win up to $5,000 dollars.

Supposedly it's part of an ongoing civil rights violation — er investigation — into the vandalism that happened after we lost to Notre Dame on April Fools' Day. I like to think of it as "The $5,000 Purdue Pyramid."

A: "Okay, um, tall, glasses … wears a hat"

B: "Is it John?"

A: "No no blue shirt that says 'No Fat Chicks,' a freshman"

B: "Oh! Buck Mulligan!"

And they're walking away with five grand. It's just that easy, folks.

Easy or not, I'm not sure how anyone in the investigation can expect a large student turnout. Look how easy online voting was for this year's PSG election, and less than 10 percent of students voted.

STUDENT GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION — AN OXYMORON

For a student body where so few of the students vote, people really seemed to care about this year's election. Campaign posters were put up and torn down. Students were urged to vote and to boycott the vote.

(Incidentally, the nearly 10 percent of voters is much higher than the 2,000 students who cared enough to "celebrate" like the April fools they were. This means that no matter what the media says about us, Purdue students still like politics more than burning Dumpsters.)

PSG senators urged students to vote for the referendum, the sweeping change of PSG's student body representation. Unless they urged them to vote against it.

In the middle of the night, one PSG senator hopped the fence at the Jischkes' mansion, desperate to talk to the good doctor himself. The police were called but the senator was able to escape to freedom.

To paraphrase "Braveheart," every politician lies but not every politician really lives.

Anyway, not many students were sure what to think of this thing that affects this other thing that doesn’t really affect them. Undaunted, they voted anyway.

And then those votes turned out to be unconstitutional and the referendum was rescinded. Unless it wasn't. See, different sources inside PSG say different things.

Speaking of hopping fences, though.

FOUNTAIN FENCING

If you weren't sure that Purdue felt like a prison enough, plans are underway to fence off both our beloved fountains.

Now if you want to have a fountain run you'll have to be a high hurdler for the Purdue Track Team or a PSG senator.

It's more of that same sick need to protect people from themselves. It's the same reason coffee now has to be labeled: "Caution: hot coffee may be hot. May cause injury if spilled in eyes."

If jets of water really are so harmful to Purdue students, start fencing where the jets of water run year-round — bathrooms. Residence hall shower stalls create potentially dangerous slick tile floors that could easily make the University liable. Let us then work on fencing off shower stalls and sinks.

Students may start to smell a little more, but at least we'll be "safe."

Because that's what college is really all about, right? Keeping the student body safe from adult situations where they would have to take responsibility for their own actions.

Purdue students have been denied their ability to play with fire and now their ability to play in water, what's next? Air? Will we be prevented from contact with the very earth itself?

It's enough to make you wonder where all the pent-up aggression that started those fires in the first place came from.

Tom McHenry is a sophomore in the School of Liberal Arts. He can be e-mailed at opinions@purdue.edu.

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