To the Editor:
I read with great interest the lead story in your July issue, Student Housing 101. I have lived across the street from UWM for seventeen years and can testify that, despite the best efforts of the City, MPD, and UWM, things here are getting worse. It is entirely due to the behavior of an admittedly small segment of the student population and their friends.
Your obviously biased writer, despite quoting the UWM student association President-Elect and a Riverwest resident, has failed to mention one simple fact:
THESE YOUNG PEOPLE ARE BREAKING THE LAW
There is no room for discussion here. The law is the law for everyone. If Rob Grover and the UWM Student Association were serious about working with the community they would embrace the proposed changes to student sanctions if for no other reason that it would show good faith. After all, they themselves keep saying the troublemakers are a small portion of the student body, so this would not affect the student body as a whole. Instead, Mr. Grover continues to cry about how put upon students are when they face any kind of consequence because they have no respect for the law, themselves or their neighbors. These incidents (loud noise, public urination, vandalism, etc) occur so often that the MPD is had put to answer many of them.
Your author quotes Supreme S. Allah who claims that UWM neighbors pay a lot of money to have access to the urban city but they want it without the urban stuff. Urban Stuff is fine, but why must a neighborhood be held captive by a small population of children who have never been taught how to live respectfully with their neighbors? Because their parents have failed them and because the municipality is swamped with serious crime, it is past time that it becomes the responsibility of their school to educate them.
Sincerely,
Philip Pearl
Riverwest Currents online edition – August, 2007