107 morons

After last week's attempt to climb back into the Princeton Review's unscientifically calculated top spot for nation's best party school with 107 arrests following the arrival of the 2010 freshman class, many students were scared. Mostly scared that they were going to jail after being covered in delousing powder and beginning a lifelong love affair with a 300-pound arsonist named Bubba. Needless to say, they felt compelled to contact IU Student Legal Services.\nLuckily enough for our 107 new lawbreakers (and unluckily for Bubba) these students learned that because of Monroe County's Defendant Accountability Program, they would only be required to pay a fine of approximately $400 and take alcohol education classes (as I am sure many of my loyal readers are already aware). Arrested students will only have to suffer this penalty, along with the horrific aspect of telling their parents that their baby boy or girl was drunker than Mel Gibson at Oktoberfest. \nLadies and gentlemen, I am a strong advocate of having a good time. I am a strong advocate of abolishing stringently enforced laws limiting the age at which adults (old enough to vote at 18) are allowed to make the decision to drink. I'm even an advocate of experimentation -- in the strongest and most diverse sense of the word -- when new students reach college. How else will they learn of all the cornerstones of the world?\nHowever, what I am not an advocate of is sheer, undeniable and limitless stupidity. And it is this state of head-in-butt syndrome that led to many of the arrests that IU saw during the past week. Take, for example, Alex, a freshman arrested lying on the front lawn of a dormitory last week. This is what he had to say about the incident:\n"On the way back (to Ashton), I got a little tired, sat down in the grass and went to sleep in front of Teter (quad)" ("Students deal with alcohol busts," IDS, Sept. 1).\nGetting tired? I have known a lot of people in my time as an insubordinate citizen who have "gotten tired" and been found later in the evening throwing up in a parking lot with a box of crackers in-hand. I'll bet none of them would have wanted their last name in the paper, either, after their little escapades.\nAt risk of being a hypocrite, let me say I too have been an expounder of stupidity. When I got my minor consumption ticket, I actually tried to hide behind a folding chair. But let me give you some advice. If you want to get completely obliterated in the coming weeks, that's fine. I hope your hangover isn't too bad. But if you know it's illegal for you to drink, and you know that you look like a tower of Jello that will fall over at any moment, then don't walk up to a group of cops and try to act sober or call them "pigs." And by all means, get your heads out of your butts.