You knew you weren’t going to get away without one, so here it is: the Obligatory Veishea Column.

Veishea, as you know, is the largest student-run celebration in the nation. There are plenty of things going on centered around this funny little acronym that’s not even accurate anymore.

Sadly, though, one of the top things on many people’s minds is that Veishea is alcohol-free, although you could have fooled me after looking at the Hy-Vee ad in Wednesday’s paper.

Too many students can’t seem to go one weekend without getting drunk. Although a minority, it is this view that seems to get inordinate coverage, this column included.

I almost feel sorry for Iowa City this weekend. While it’s Veishea weekend here, it’s party weekend there, because some ISU students will go the distance for a drink.

The Daily Iowan actually did an article about it in 2000. It gives you a view of what other places thought about the celebration in its third alcohol-free year. Some things have changed since, some have not.

ISU students interviewed for the article said it sucked in Ames and gets worse every year, that “the nighttime aspect has become fruitless,” that Veishea was more fun before it became alcohol-free (and that was from an ISU freshman!), that parties were being held in Iowa City as a response to Veishea “because extra security and police will make it difficult to drink as usual in Ames.”

While I am, of course, not old enough to have experienced a wet Veishea, I am old enough to have seen footage of the last riot on TV, footage usually reserved for after winning a championship.

That last riot, in 1994, involved 1,000 people on Franklin Avenue and police with tear gas. And that was the Iowa State everyone who didn’t attend Veishea saw.

“Hey!” some of you may be saying at this point. “You’re equating alcohol with rioting and everything else bad about Veishea’s past, and that’s not all true.” Fine. What, then, went on in the early evening that led up to tear gas?

Or take the police blotter. The combined pages of the blotter after that weekend in 1997 totaled about one full newspaper page, almost all related to alcohol, and that was after resorting to lists of “The following individuals were given citations for.” . In 2001, it was a third of a page total. Why is this a bad thing?

Hundreds of people misused alcohol. To make it safer for everyone, the university requires us to abstain from it for the weekend. It’s a “paying for the sins of those before us” thing, but let the blame go from there where it may. Besides, surely you can do without alcohol for 72 of the 8760 hours in a year.

That alcohol policy, of course, was challenged this year by the Inter-Residence Hall Association. While failing to change the alcohol rule, it did succeed in changing some others and should be complimented for that.

But, at the same time, in preparing the delivery to the administration IRHA delivered itself a nice swift kick in the groin by wanting to say, essentially, “If our demands are not met, we will abandon Veishea to the greeks and GSB-funded groups once and for all.”

It was such an intelligent move. Participation by those in the residence halls is low enough; why not just try and forbid anyone to participate at all?

With that boycott provision, which cooler heads later removed, IRHA looked like it wanted to punish and remove dorm participation altogether by denying associated groups any money. Well, for the few residence-hall activities there are anyway.

But the greeks and student groups should not be the only ones propping up the Veishea tent, and any participation by those in the dorms, or anyone else, is better than none. Everyone doing something for Veishea this weekend, even if it is just enjoying others’ work, should be proud; everyone not doing something should ask themselves why.

For me, Veishea was and still is a reminder of what people can do in college.

Years before trudging to Physics 221, I saw students in the same room have fun with science.

Veishea introduced me to both the Daily and Toons.

And besides, any celebration that once had TV cameras broadcast to all of central Iowa a shot of my college-age parents kissing probably isn’t all bad.

Jeff Morrison is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication and political science from Traer. He is a copy editor for the Daily.