To the editor,

While Veishea is just three weeks away, I would like to remind readers that it was just six short years ago that Iowa State had its most recent “party riot” involving thousands of students. As a result, nothing sharpens the senses of local leaders more acutely than looking down the barrel of another Veishea.

For the uninitiated, Veishea is the annual event that exposes to public view the years of wrong-headed policies around alcohol use, and the mismanagement of the student body — except for the most compliant — by the division of student affairs.

Dr. Larry Brendtro said, “In most fields of professional knowledge, the expert thinks in different ways than the naive observer. But specialists with troubled youth often alter only the words, while the music continues with refrains of ‘attack’ or ‘avoid.’”

Because the primary focus of large land-grant universities is research and publishing, student governance mostly takes a back seat.

As a result, the dorms are not organized around cutting-edge management strategies, and at-risk students often run amok in small and large ways. Then, these same students move off campus, taking the values learned in the dorms with them into the community.

But don’t worry; Iowa State, with the help of the city of Ames, has a plan if students really get out of line during Veishea.

A disturbance will be met with swift and questionable police tactics that will result in a draw, yet the public will applaud the theatrics as a win for law and order. The university and city will then figuratively circle the wagons to end all debate, and use spin control with the press.

Lobbyists will be dispatched to the Iowa Statehouse and to Washington D.C. to call in favors. All problems will be blamed on the students themselves, and one or two undergraduates will be scapegoated by the Story County and ISU justice systems.

Then, a task force of local experts, who get their power from the status quo, will be convened. Lawyers from various state agencies will review student complaints and the U.S. Department of Justice will look the other way. As a result, those in power will be absolved of all wrongdoing, and nothing substantive will change.

Then, a summit will be held with experts from other large land-grant universities that suffer from these same kinds of disturbances, who themselves refuse to change.

The purpose is to make it seem like the underlying issues around the 210 “party riots” that have occurred at mostly large land-grant universities since the mid-’80s are actually being addressed.

All the above tactics are used because officials know that the public relations black eye will disappear from sight after a year as people tire of the issue. By dealing with major disturbances in the above mentioned ways, it is much cheaper and much less disruptive to the campus bureaucracy than actually fixing the underlying problems.

This is what passes as “best practices” at Iowa State. Have a happy and safe Veishea.

Jon Shelness is a 2004 alumnus.