The low feeling I had after Iowa’s win on Saturday was not due just to the actions on the field. It was not due to thousands of Iowa fans singing their fight song in our stadium.

It was because of the students — the Iowa State students. That day, I was ashamed to be a Cyclone fan.

The F-word printed three inches high on the front and back of a shirt is not what anyone should be walking around wearing in what is supposed to be an all-ages area. Neither are shirts showing Cy and/or Herky and/or cheerleaders in positions better suited for the Kama Sutra. Somewhere in the recent past, the messages went from borderline cutesy (“Huck the Fawks”) to ignoring all pretenses and being all-out obscene and profane.

As for shirts that depict the comic strip character Calvin urinating on the Hawkeye logo, they have no legal standing at all. Bill Watterson never licensed the characters, and even if he had, shirts like that would not be on the list. So those are not only disgusting in their less-than-juvenile depiction — Calvin himself would find a better way to insult someone — they’re also illegal because they violate copyright, and one would be hard-pressed to justify it as parody.

If you want to swear up a storm and draw graphic images against an opponent, that’s fine — elsewhere. But don’t walk around 53,000 other people with the F-word plastered across your chest.

It’s a wonder students complain about no respect when their actions show they’re not asking for any.

My disgust was not limited to the game itself; the parking situation was also a factor.

The ISU athletic department moved students away from the immediate vicinity of the stadium without much student input. That is something perfectly acceptable to be up in arms about. But then an attempt was made to rectify it, only for the students to give a clear message about what they value the most.

The GSB senate introduced a resolution Sept. 3 that proposed a student-only, alcohol-free space in Lot S-4. But a week later, after gathering feedback from students, GSB withdrew that resolution and asked for general parking instead.

It appears that given a choice between alcohol-free tailgating near the stadium, and alcohol-laden tailgating farther from it, students value their beer more than close space. Given the university’s concern for safety, and the option of the alcohol-free lot, students now have no one to blame but themselves for not getting space by the stadium.

The mentality will have to change before the situation does. Tony Luken, speaker of the senate, said in the Sept. 10 Daily article “GSB will decide on alcohol-free student lot for tailgating” that drinking beer before the game is “what college is supposed to be about.”

No, it is not! College and beer, or tailgating and beer, are not some sort of symbiotic organism in which one will die without the other. If you don’t believe consuming vast quantities of alcohol can be separated from a fun college/tailgating experience, and value that more than prime parking, that’s not a problem for the university to solve. When the student in front of me is sitting not because he wants to, I’m pretty sure, but because he’s too sloshed to stand, there is a problem. That problem is not on the university’s end, but at the end of the myriad beer bongs in the student areas.

Now GSB is trying to withhold funds from the athletic department, saying it “believes the consumption of alcohol has been used as a scapegoat.”

Wonder why? Take a look at Page 2 of the Daily the past two weeks. The ISUPD log has had so many entries it has run across six columns to stay caught up. Wednesday’s entry for the day of the Iowa game took up more than 48 inches in 7-point type. If the university is picking a “scapegoat,” it is doing so with good reason. National Cyclone Club members may drink in their lots, but they’re doing it legally and not to excess, which is more than can be said for the majority of students.

But what does parking matter when registered patrons can’t even get in? My dad, the passholder two vehicles ahead of us and numerous others were shunted away from spots they paid for with a curt “The lot is full.” Dad ended up in Vet Med — Vet Med! — where he saw many others with passes.

There were a lot of passholders out there denied the space they paid for, on the day they needed it the most. Media Relations director Tom Kroeschell and National Cyclone Club director Joan Bowles told me that the increase of ticket holders balanced with the possibility of empty lots during other games led to their current policies, and they were going to try to make sure Saturday’s situation did not happen again. The Iowa game shows that donors don’t always get what they paid for either.

In the Sept. 17 Daily article “GSB to propose cut in student fees for athletic department,” Luken said, “If National Cyclone Club donors were treated like students have been treated by the athletic department, you wouldn’t have a National Cyclone Club.” But at the Iowa game, some club members were treated worse than students.

With the way students act, both in their appearance and slavish devotion to alcohol, they should consider themselves lucky they’re allowed anywhere near the stadium at all.