the last word (tm)

Vol. 16/No. 5 - 438th issue - June 21, 2007
bandit@iglou.com - http://members.iglou.com/bandit - Bellevue, Kentucky
Blog blogga blogs at http://bandit73.pitas.com and http://www.myspace.com/bandit41073

MORE OUTSIDE (?) AGITATION!

June 20 - Cue the Electric Company music! (Wokka wokka wokka!) It's time for some outside agitation (hence the '70s-like soundtrack)!

You'll recall that The Last Word championed outside agitation at Northern Kentucky University in the late '90s. This practice involved yours truly appearing on campus to advance this zine's political goals, despite no longer being a student there. The Old Guard was horrified. Our activity ended when some liar lied to the cops about what we were doing. (Making a false police report is a crime, but who's counting?)

We so wish the latest story took place at a college in Kentucky, not only because this is a Kentucky zine, but also because my beloved Greengrass State has such a calamitous education system. Hell, the University of Kentucky actually hired James Holsinger (the right-wing bigot Bush nominated to be Sturgeon General) to chair its health sciences department! (Your tax dollars at work.) Instead, this story deals with an uproarious incident at the University of Cincinnati.

The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that a 48-year-old man has been doing some outside agitating of his own over at UC. It's a bit like what we did a decade ago at NKU, only even funnier. (The big difference is that he claims to still be a student, but we'll get to that.) Also like NKU, UC is collapsing all over itself to gunk up the court system with phony-baloney criminal charges against the agitator.

Police at UC have arrested the man 22 times in the past 5 years for "trespassing", despite it being a public, taxpayer-supported university. This charge is especially specious, because university officials say he was a student there as recently as late 2004, so evidently he was accused of "trespassing" while he was actually a student.

From what we can gather, we're siding with the guy. He'd taken an interest in social causes, but it's not known exactly what his views are. We're guessing that he's probably not conservative, because if he was, he probably would have been allowed to do whatever he wanted on campus. (We know that's how it works in Kentucky, so it's probably like that in Ohio too.) And even if he is, that makes no difference to us in this story. Whatever his views, his tax dollars fund the school, so it's hard for the university to claim he was "trespassing" just by being on campus.

On the other hand, we could be completely wrong about all of this. Maybe we didn't get the whole story. Knowing the dinosaur media, that's a possibility too, though we'll give the press the benefit of the doubt this time.

UC is going to court to try to win an order to bar the man from appearing on campus ever again, for as long as he lives. A lawyer for UC - who was generously provided by the state of Ohio and paid for by the taxpayers - complained that the gentleman is "stalking an institution." And how does one accomplish that, dare we inquire? We can't seem to find anything in the stalking laws about "stalking an institution."

Some of this individual's actions on campus have been rather amusing. Apparently an officer once discovered that the man had fallen asleep on the toilet, and in a separate incident he was reportedly found intoxicated in the bushes with a half-devoured pizza by his side. But it's hard to see how these acts pose so much of a threat that the school has to waste the court's time trying to ban him from campus for good - especially because what P-Man and Helmethead did at NKU was so much worse, yet they didn't get in any trouble for several years (or, in Helmethead's case, ever). We wish we could find the article about all the trouble athletes at UC were involved in but not getting punished for.

But here's where it gets even more exciting. The man who keeps getting arrested lately at UC claims he's actually still a student there (despite what the university claims). He actually attends classes, does his homework, and has joined student clubs. So really it's inside agitation! Despite this, campus police continue arresting him for "trespassing" at a school where he appears to be a student.

Sounds like this fella's having an even greater blast than we did in our NKU agitation spectacle!

More evidence he's being singled out for oppression? At least thrice while I was a teenager, I was on UC's campus for various events despite not being a student there, and nobody batted an eye. UC has already stated that much of the campus, including libraries, is open to the public, so it's hard to see what basis their "trespassing" case rests on, even if the accused isn't a student.

We'd wager that the charges are just another political vendetta like that held by NKU.

Go ahead! Agitate! It's free and legal!

ANOTHER LETTER FROM THE WASTELAND

I get e-mail.

This one's been on the backburner for a few months, but it's a doozy. The e-mail I received reads:

"... I graduated from Bishop Brossart years ago and never seemed to have the problems you are citing.

"I have turned out just fine, due in part to a very fine education and an instilment [sic] of discipline from my great teachers at Brossart."

I checked reunion websites, and it turns out this letter writer apparently did graduate from the oft-lampooned Bishop Brossart High School - in 1976! (That's a year with some memorable outside agitation music!) That was 2 years before Brossart's current totalitarian regime took power. Nice to know that a man who's going on 50 still sends insulting e-mail to people who dare to criticize his alma mater.

I occasionally get e-mails and guestbook comments that say Bro$$art was a shithole even before the current administration (at least as far back as the '60s) - so this boring beezweezer is outvoted.

The man's letter skips down a few lines (he's trying to be dramatic, you know) and states:

"I happen to think it is very clear why you might have had problems."

Um, because it's Brossart, perhaps??? Weird how I never had these problems at Holmes, at Gateway, or at a slew of other schools. Could it be because Brossart is...shitty, maybe???

It wasn't NKU that made phone calls at 11 PM babbling about an undamaged soap sculpture not being handed in for art appreciation class a month earlier (after the teacher demolished the first attempt). It wasn't Cold Spring Elementary that broke into a student's locker and confiscated a Dick Gephardt campaign mailing because the logo on it resembled a pentagram. (Personally I think it looked more like the Chrysler logo.)

Brossart. Uniquely bad.

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(Copywrong 2007)
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