Last Tuesday ISU President Gregory Geoffroy announced there would be no Veishea 2005. The annual festival — held every single year since 1922 — is postponed for one year to spend lots of time thinking and perfecting student regulation to within an inch of our lives.

This ignores basic social psychology: Give people respect and responsibility, and good things will happen. On the flip side, treating people as the enemy breeds exactly that.

Popular student sentiment immediately screamed we don’t need permission to share our collegiate endeavors with the Ames community, to enjoy live music or to organize special events.

We just simply don’t need it. Veishea is an 82-year-old student-organized festival.

We’re funded $75,000 for the event, but why should money stop poor college students from doing anything?

Nobody has stopped us yet from paying the rent or buying the Ramen.

Like all other financial challenges, solving this one simply requires our ingrained creativity.

We are 27,000 strong.

We are smart, we are capable, and we are not going to let the actions of a few vandals stop us from sharing ourselves with our community.

We will not be forced into hiding by bitter English professors, because we have nothing to be ashamed of.

We will not be herded into some grotesque stereotype because we are 27,000 unique human beings each with something to contribute.

This is our time to shine. This is our time to connect back to the Ames community without the hindrance of alienating university regulations.

This is our chance, and we have everything we need to see this to completion.

A number of thoughtful names for this event have been proposed. We obviously can’t call it Veishea, for legal and spiritual reasons. Whatever we settle on, it’ll only be a name.

What matters is the Ames community landing on campus in communal celebration.

Another question is where to hold it.

The pro-community event must be held within city limits, giving us our own spaces — Campustown, the greek lawns and university grounds to work with. There’s a lot to discuss and we fortunately have ample time for this.

With the ingenuity and multitude of backgrounds on our campus, putting on a great festival for Ames to forever remember is well within our reach and simply what must be done.

An essential piece of the 2005 festival is an improvement in relations between ISU students and the Ames community at large.

Both “sides” are guilty of regrettable behavior, but it’s time to get past that because we only have one Ames. So much depends on this.

If you’ll be around this summer and want to work to improve community relations, get in contact with me.

Together we will make the 2005 festival an unforgettable moment in Ames history.

It is the year we will share ourselves with the city and usher in a new era of relations for everyone’s sake. Everyone is invited and most welcome.

Nicolai Brown is a junior in linguistics from Okoboji.