Ever since Erika Witherspoon wrote her “We Won’t Stop Partying” letter to the editor in which she complained about campus police enforcing alcohol laws, I’ve heard a lot of people say that her stance on the topic is irrational and over the top. I say it’s time to leave her alone. It’s not like she accused campus police of fascism.

Oh wait. Did she do that?

But even so, I agree that campus police should take it down a notch. As a hard-working student, nothing helps me recover from a week of exams like downing a fifth of Jack Daniels, staggering outside to vomit in my neighbor’s shrubbery and then passing out in the middle of 48th Street.

Also, nothing kills the recovery process like waking up to a flashlight in my eyes and a police officer saying that I need to get out of the road and put on some pants. Dear Mr. Police Officer, did you know the Nazis made occupied France wear pants? How unjust.

Never mind that DPS officials have said the campus police care more about students than dealing out MIPs. Never mind that if a minor is suffering from alcohol poisoning and calls for help, campus police will not write them up. These are obviously just ploys to garner sympathy from simple minds.

When Witherspoon said the police should stop acting as if they’re doing students a favor, I couldn’t have agreed more. Without law enforcement, we’d be living in a post-apocalyptic world where crime lords rule and bottle caps are traded for currency. What’s not fun about that? Everybody knows that there ain’t no party like an end-of-the-world party ‘cause an end-of-the-world party don’t stop? At least until the slime mutants crawl out of the sewers and attack your tent city.

But Witherspoon’s most correct point was this: drinking is patriotic. It’s true, almost every aspect of American life is affected by alcohol. You didn’t think the boys in Washington cooked up the Patriot Act and bank bailouts while they were sober, did you?

So campus police, I’m calling on you to listen to what Witherspoon has to say. Take it down a notch. After all, drunk driving only killed 11,773 people in the United States in 2008. Just 282 of those deaths were in Michigan. That’s a small number compared to how many people could be partying right now? Right?

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