The Wake

The Minnesota Student Association will be holding elections to determine a new President and Vice President this coming April. These elections, to our dismay, are usually characterized by disinterest amongst the student population and low voter turnout. Michael Griffin and Vince Patti (running for President and Vice President, respectively) hope to reverse these trends by working to correct pressing issues that affect the student body at the University of Minnesota. In the eyes of these two candidates, nothing has been more misguided and needless than Operation NightCAP, perhaps better known as the “Party Patrol” consisting of police that shut down house parties with militaristic precision.

“Operation NightCAP must end,” is the mantra of Griffin and Patti’s 2007 campaign. Since the program’s inception during Homecoming weekend of 2004, thousands of dollars in fines for underage consumption and noisy assembly have been levied on U students. The severity of the fines and the aggressive nature of NightCAP’s enforcement has raised concerns that the program is too powerful.

Police officers seem to be more concerned with busting parties than creating a safe environment for students. Proof of this disturbing trend can be found in several incidents that have occurred during exceedingly aggressive NightCAP raids. During a party this past fall in the notorious “White Pillar House” at the intersection of 4th and 13th a student jumped out of a third story window in an attempt to evade the Party Patrol. He landed on the roof of a parked car. Does this sound like a police initiative that aims to work with students and protect them or one that hopes to control them by means of fear and brute strength? Another incident occurred in Michael Griffin’s living room in September, 2005. A Minneapolis police officer forced his way into Griffin’s living room and told him to, “shut up and listen,” before kicking a glass off the coffee table at Griffin’s face. The glass hit Griffin square in the forehead and left a bloody cut, but rather than make amends for his violent actions, the officer ran out of the living room without providing his identity.

These two incidents exemplify the unnecessary force that police use to support NightCAP, and the resulting harm that can occur to University students. It should be emphasized that most of the student parties busted by Party Patrol could easily be dispersed if the police simply converse with the tenants and suggest that everyone go home. If elected, Griffin and Patti will meet with UMPD Captain, Steve Johnson, to discuss the discontinuation of Operation NightCAP.

Michael Griffin is not the only MSA hopeful to feel the sting of the Party Patrol. Vince Patti has accumulated several drinking tickets as a result of NightCAP. When the officers swarm a house, they give drinking tickets to the underage and also give noise violations to the students over 21. That is a very high price to pay for a drink, even when accounting for the high sin tax in Minnesota. Patti’s fines have made financing his education much more difficult than necessary, especially when considering the yearly increases in tuition costs. One part of these rising costs are due to the amount of money needed to finance Operation NightCAP. Griffin and Patti wonder which is worse: college students drinking underage, which has and will always happen, or the massive debt college students accrue to ensure a safe campus. It is obvious that a few neo-Puritans have guided campus law to uphold moral taboos instead of supporting and protecting its most important patrons: the students.

You would hope that for the money being pumped into Operation NightCAP it would result in a safer campus. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. Violent crime on campus has risen over the past three years. This contradicts the logic behind NightCAP that suggests that large, noisy parties either attract crime or are the genesis of crime. Instead students have become accustomed to reading about muggings, beatings and break-ins in the Marcy-Holmes, Southeast Como and Prospect Park neighborhoods. Earlier this fall, a student was beaten in the Southeast Como area so severely that he needed reconstructive surgery to repair a broken jaw, and fractured skull. Operation NightCAP is not teaching students to behave with more self-control or make wiser choices. It is alienating them from the police, who are supposed to protect them. Wouldn’t it make sense for additional police forces to patrol these troubled neighborhoods rather than seek and destroy parties that neighbors may or may not have complained about? Griffin and Patti hope that the large number of students who have voiced their displeasure with Operation NightCAP will come to vote in record numbers this April. Change will follow.

Michael Griffin and Vince Patti would like to announce their goal for 5,000 or more students to vote in this spring’s election as a sign of support for the abolishment of Operation NightCAP and lower tuition costs. That goal looks intimidating, but it represents only about 25% of the entire undergraduate population here at the U. Griffin/Patti urge you to get involved by voting, even if you don’t vote for them. A University is only as strong as its students, so flex some muscle for the Board of Regents and President Bruininks this April. Let them know that you want to eliminate the nonsensical Operation NightCAP program and that tuition costs are too high to continue rising. Let them know that this is your University and that you are students, not slaves or prisoners.