Let’s talk about why I hate Veishea. All I hear are complaints about how people can’t drink, how this event isn’t student-run and how DPS and Ames Police flex their fascist muscle. People don’t think about why this is all happening. People don’t care about Uri.

I dealt with the whole situation very well. I remember that feeling when my ex-girlfriend interrupted my busboy duties to say Uri died the previous night in Ames. I remember watching the tube with my friends to find out if the assailants had been caught. I remember Uri’s little brother passing by his casket trying to hold a stoic demeanor while the rest of the community standing graveside broke down.

I was a friend but not his best friend. I wasn’t close enough to him to get the number 43 tattooed on my shoulder. I probably shouldn’t feel as much as his close friends, especially when a bunch of those guys also go to Iowa State and go through the same crap I do.

Ames and ISU treat Uri’s tragedy as a joke. About how some “hicks” got into a knife fight, and now the student population can’t have fun drinking beer or breaking stuff during a riot. About how people whine over how this age-old community event might be terminated because some hot-headed out-of-towners decided to get in each others’ faces.

Please just stop using Uri as a staple for your humor columns.

Please stop bitching about alcohol. Please just drop the whole conversation and let him rest in peace. But since no one cares, I won’t expect anything.

Seth Shannon

Sophomore

Architecture