Tailgating outside Kelly/Shorts Stadium is becoming a more regulated affair, and some participants are objecting.
One student is organizing a movement to gather Greeks and other students to move the tailgating to Main Street. Warren senior Joshua Thomas of Alpha Kappa Psi believes the policy changes are unnecessary.
He said it feels like the university is confining what students can do, and that tailgating is a tradition it should not tamper with.
“We would probably still tailgate because it’s a tradition, but we’d expand around (as well),” Thomas said.
Mount Pleasant sophomore Tay Jackson’s efforts can be found on the Facebook group, “Student Tailgating on Main St.”
The new tailgating policy includes a limit of six alcoholic beverages or one pint of alcoholic beverage per person. Sound systems beyond stock car radios are no not permitted.
The group currently has more than 400 members.
Its description for “Student Tailgating on Main St.” narrates the group’s efforts as being focused toward trying to bring the pregame atmosphere back to the students.
“My vision for the group is like how Michigan State does it — all apartments and student housing areas surrounding campus just grill out then move to the game.” Jackson said in an e-mail.
Jackson said this is likely a better alternative to the practices followed before.
“The old CMU system was obviously out of hand and I’m guessing was too much of a liability for the school. So why even still promote a tailgate when students could spread it out around all the areas of housing and not concentrate a riot in one parking lot?” Jackson said.
For some students, the changes do not seem to be all that restrictive.
“The only thing that seemed different to me was (that there can be) no external sound systems,” Port Huron junior and Alpha Phi Omega member Robert VanBuskirk said.
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Connor Sheridan
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This idea won’t work because it isn’t spreading anything out. It’s just attempting to move the tailgate to a new area that’s roughly the same size. Whatever problems the Tailgate currently has that is causing the rules change will only resurface on Main St., which at that point would be even more hazardous to students, especially if the crowd’s attendance gets anywhere near the ballpark that the current tailgate gets. Beyond this, I’m sure that CMU would not like this at all, seeing as how they were trying to condense and isolate the tailgate area in the first place. Spreading it around over Main St. completely opposes this idea, and also puts students at risk legally for anything from serving minors to noise violations and nuisance parties. Also, this is only going to keep students from going to the games, which is the whole reason for tailgating right outside of the staduim. If people think attendance was a problem before, this will only worsen it. Not a good idea, but people will probably do it, sigh.
Rob, if you’ve been around CMU for any amount of time, it should be very apparent to you and others that the administration doesn’t listen to students when it comes to policy changes. It’s only when the students have shown them (note that: shown them) through action that their ridiculous ideas have no place outside of a meeting room, that they’ve taken any action. Showing them that the student body cannot be contained is a fantastic method of passive defiance in my opinion. There are no rules against tailgating on main.
Totally agree that this is going to kill the student attendance. Back in the day the student section was just a corner of the stadium. Last year it took up an entire endzone (which blew my mind). I sincerely hope they get an incredibly poor student turnout for the first homegame – maybe then they’ll realized that to enforce draconian rules on a group of that size will only result in an opposite reaction.