Drunk with power, new dean proposes messing with tailgating

Published 12:09 pm Friday, April 8, 2016

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">By my estimation, hardly a day goes by that we don’t hear yet another tale of doom and gloom about our dead-broke state.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">You’d think that would be plenty to keep the busybodies in various government agencies actively running to and fro.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So how is it that LSU officials have suddenly found time to undertake a massive project of fixing something that isn’t broken?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Somehow they squeezed it in.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Even with the daily gloom coming out of Baton Rouge, they found another pressing issue.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Yes, there are many problems and our state is facing trying days, indeed, finding solutions to the ills.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">LSU’s football tailgating isn’t one of them.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Even when the Tigers are forward pass-challenged inside Tiger Stadium, outside the joint the tailgate scene rolls on, generally to rave reviews.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">If it’s not the nation’s best pregame festival, it generally shows up on the short list by those who occasionally rate such things on the internet’s slow days.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s not quite as glamorous as leading the nation in obesity or teenage pregnancy, but it’s something for the state to take pride in.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But somebody in authority at the Ol’ War School wants to fix it anyway.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There is one positive to this.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">If they’re throwing up their arms about LSU’s tailgating scene, evidently it means they plan on staging a football season this fall.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So maybe all the dire warnings from the governor’s office about a fall without football (or tailgating) were just, as we all suspected, crying wolf.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">With or without TOPS.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There will be football.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There will also be tailgating.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But LSU’s new dean of students, Maria Fuentes-Martin, who’s been at the school less than a year, has some suggestions of things to eliminate.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Among the tailgate staples that would be in jeopardy, according to a story in the The Advocate of Baton Rouge, are “glass bottles, drinking games, funnels, beer kegs or alcoholic party punches, couches, TVs or indoor furniture and tents more than 10 feet by 10 feet.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Other than that … party on … and Beat Bama!</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But not to worry.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">None of this is likely to affect you, the commuting fan. They’re not totally crazy.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">These measures, if adopted, would apply only if you’re an LSU student AND in a student organization AND said organization tailgates as a group, mostly on the campus Parade Grounds.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But apparently …</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Wait a minute.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Couches?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Couches are a big problem? I know at West Virginia they make quite a sport of burning the things, but never heard tell of such at LSU.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">And TVs?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">How else you can pull against Alabama in the afternoon game?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Again, none of this applies to the average fan, if LSU has such a thing.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">If you’re not part of a student organization involved in public tailgating, you can slap your couch on Nicholson Drive and drink fireballs from a funnel while playing beer pong and watching the Vanderbilt-Kentucky game on a 56-inch flat screen.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s those pesky student organizations that can’t be trusted with “indoor furniture.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">At best, this seems to be student organizational profiling.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s probably aimed at fraternities and sororoties, but would apply equally to everything from the law school to the biology club to the philharmonic choir.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Among the proposals would be that student organizations would have to register their tailgate parties and use third-party vendors to serve university-approved only alcoholic beverages (no stunt-drinking with kamikaze shots) or maybe have a central depository to better regulate the outflow.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The student response, as reported by The Advocate, was predictable.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“We’re just going to drink regardless,” said one.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There are flaws, not the least of which is enforcement.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Also, the students, if they qualify for what’s left of TOPS, are smart enough to figure this out on their own.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">You simply don’t declare your student organization and congregate somewhat haphazardly at a random spot selected two weeks in advance.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Then you can have your couch and drink it too.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Others of a suspicious bend have noted that “third-party vendors” is just another code phrase for another way for somebody to make commercial money off a longstanding tradition.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Nah, LSU would never be party to that.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The proposals made no mention of improving the traffic flow, which generally gets glossed over in all those internet rankings.</span>

<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">—</span>

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