THEUWMPOST est. 1956
the student-run independent newspaper
Issue 2, Volume 57
September 10, 2012
39 arrested in MPD bust
By Caitlin PenzeyMoog News Editor news@uwmpost.com
Post photo by Austin McDowell
Show your pride,
not your hormones A mix of dull performances and riled teenagers, Pantherfest upset
By Kevin Kaber Fringe Editor fringe@uwmpost.com Welcome, incoming freshmen. May your pursuit of higher education be fruitful. Though UW-Milwaukee suffers the woes of being the little sister to the University of Wisconsin (and Milwaukee itself to Chicago), our school’s administration still appreciates and respects its own students regardless if they decide to transfer after their first year or simply drop out. Each year, UWM hosts an expansive week of kickoff events to celebrate the new year and welcome well-intentioned freshmen. Rock climbing walls, kickball tournaments and cosmic bowling all lead to Pantherfest – a huge concert free for UWM students held at the Marcus Amphitheater. In years past, Pantherfest headliners have included Lupe Fiasco, Girl Talk, Kid Cudi, Shiny Toy Guns and so on. This year, hip hop all-stars B.o.B and J. Cole headlined the Campus Kickoff opus. Perhaps taking a page from last year, an area musician served as opening act. DJ Devast8 manned his small laptop/turntable setup in front of a growing crowd of slightly to very intoxicated cut-off-T-shirt-toting freshman. Playing more-or-less unaltered songs and nodding his head between asking “Where my freshmens [sic] at,” Devast8 was pretty lackluster. His “freshmens” didn’t seem to mind though; instead, they found solace in one another, for better or worse. Before Devast8 totally devastated, he pissed a few (or thousands of) people off when the crowd began realizing some of his tunes were edited for filth. While chanting the lines to Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “Niggas in Paris,” for example, the audience was at a loss when the blanks were cray and when Kanye asked Mary Kate and Ashley what Gucci and Louis are. Even more devastatingly embarrassing for Devast8 was technical error which led to an infinite loop of about two sec-
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NEWS SPORTS
onds of beats. After fumbling around for minutes, Devast8 finally hit the stop button, asked us to Google him, and left. Most UWM students weren’t there for DJ Devast8 however. Even though the headliners were announced only two weeks in advance, many Panthers were there to see B.o.B. and J. Cole – two very, very similar artists and performers who’s works flood radio stations with very, very similar music. Unlike Lupe Fiasco’s active and engaging set at last year’s Pantherfest and Kanye West’s grandiose performance at 2011’s Summerfest, B.o.B and J. Cole fell short on keeping everyone’s attention (but let’s be honest, most of us were there because it was free.) B.o.B took the stage first, aggressively rapping “Beast Mode,” losing both his hat and shades while his hefty gold chain bounced as he did. Running from one side of the stage to the next, the Atlanta-based rapper made his presence known, even pausing to shake the hands of the eager fans up front (concert-goers got wristbands with VIP-access if they took the shuttle from campus to the Summerfest grounds first). Even more, B.o.B would launch himself into the crowd to cheers and chants and the immediate response of security. The set got old quick, aside from performing the way-overplayed “Airplanes” (the song with the girl from Paramore) and “Magic” (featuring the dude from Weezer). Giving special attention to his sexy female fans in attendance, B.o.B was met with sloppy, smiling faces and maybe a cat-fight when he threw his shirt off to the ladies in the front before exiting the stage. J. Cole was pretty much the same, save for being a bit calmer. Opening with “Who Dat,” the hip hop artist retraced B.o.B.’s same steps – from stage left to right, stopping here and there. At one point, J. Cole threw on a UWM hoodie, which was cool, although at this point, way too many of the younger students were tuckering out,
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FRINGE EDITORIAL
likely due to their binge drinking before getting on the shuttle to the show. Not even hard hitting lyrics like “Baby girl, I can’t imagine what it’s like for you/I got you pregnant now inside there is a life in you” could keep the crowd’s attention in full. In addition to the dull performances (which might have been enhanced in a smaller setting and if uninterested students didn’t feel compelled to attend), UWM’s new and younger students in attendance really showed some skuzzy pride at our school’s largest event. Students were getting hauled away left and right by security and police, a good percentage of the concert-goers having found themselves in verbal and physical fights (or they just stood on their chairs). Anytime you throw thousands of hormone-crazed and intoxicated teens in the same area, security is without a doubt going to be busy. But there’s really no need for these bros to be fighting over the handful of girls-struggling-to-walkin-unnecessar y-heels-and-sportingthose-weird-shirts-that-expose-theirentire-belly. It’s pretty embarrassing for our university and community, really. It’s no wonder why Murray Hill residents are always pissed and Pantherfest organizers have to repeatedly tell students to respect their neighborhood. Maybe I’m just getting a bit cynical in my upper classmen years, but something’s got to give here. Pantherfest is a welcome and celebration for all students that not many universities have, not to mention it’s free. If you want to drink before the show, fine. But keep in mind that Pantherfest is for you (sorry you can’t really choose the performers, but oh well). Much of the behavior there is embarrassing for the school and yourselves and there’s no way to really put a stop to it – new horny students will show up next year, drink more than they should, and make for an upsetting Pantherfest.
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Twenty-five UW-Milwaukee students were arrested on the East Side Saturday night as part of a Milwaukee Police Department operation to “return the neighborhoods to those who deserve to live there free from crime, fear and disorder,” according to a MPD press release. Six of the 25 students arrested were UWM student athletes. The most ticketed offense of the night, with 22 of the 39 citations issued for it, was underage drinking/possession. Capt. Stephen Basting of the MPD’s First District said the Saturday night crackdown was supposed to be a night of educating students about underage drinking and disorderly conduct. Subsequent weekends would be “the same mission, but each progressive mission gears more toward enforcement than education,” said Basting. MPD set up a mobile command center on the corner of Murray St. and Newberry St. Saturday afternoon, and held a public roll call in the street at 5:00 p.m. Police Chief Ed Flynn conducted the roll call. The night started out rainy and slow, with only three arrests at nine o’clock. But the rain let up and by sunrise MPD had arrested a total of 39 people. That number came as a surprise to Basting. “We did a similar thing last year, and the word got out on the street about us. It was a quiet night,” he said. “Not at all like this year. This year it was like any other weekend.” Concerned about the effectiveness of the ticket and release program, MPD decided to process perpetrators on the scene and shuttle them to police headquarters for fingerprinting and photographing. Of the six athletes arrested, five are listed on the roster for the UWM Men’s Basketball Team: Ryan Haggerty, senior; Demetrius Harris, senior; Kyle Kelm, ju-
nior; Jeremy (J.J) Panoske, freshman. Neither the athletes nor the UWM Athletics Department could be reached for comment about the incident. East Side resident Maggie Herbst has lived on the corner of Newberry and Cramer for ten years and is used to weekend partiers. But she says lately students have become drunker and louder. “In all the years I’ve lived here, this year was by far the worst,” she said. Herbst said the students she has asked to quiet down outside of her house have a mentality that they don’t have to share the neighborhood. “I said ‘it’s gotten pretty late. You should take it indoors.’ And they said, ‘Well, you shouldn’t be living on campus.’” Herbst said that her family has owned her home since the fifties and the area has always been considered off-campus. Basting also said he had an increase in neighborhood residents calling the police about disorderly conduct, in part the result of the local neighborhood association’s “Report it, Record it” program. Basting told the UWM Post about the first arrests of the evening: “One guy’s a .26 [blood alcohol content] and the other guy;s a .21, and the funny part is that the cops had stopped to talk to them an hour earlier and gave them the [informational] fliers. I was over at the arrest and they said, ‘We never saw you and you never gave us this.” And then they pulled [the flier] out of their pockets. They’re just so drunk they don’t even realize.” Although UWM officials could not be reached for comment, the UWM Student Association released the following statement: “[We] value the safety of our student body, and will work in collaboration and cooperation with the City of Milwaukee, the neighborhood around campus, and the University to ensure students remain safe and educated about being responsible neighbors.” Additional reporting by Zach Erdmann
Renovations to Klostche
Center in the works
Men’s basketball moves to campus By Caitlin PenzeyMoog News Editor news@uwmpost.com The Klotsche Center is slated to get a face lift: starting this semester, students will notice renovations inside the sports building with an emphasis on updating the men’s basketball court. From fall of 2010 to spring of 2012, students paid an Athletics Arena Capital Project Fund - a $25 dollar segregated fee toward building a new basketball arena on UW-Milwaukee’s campus. The idea was to move the men’s basketball team from the U.S. Cellular Arena downtown to an on-campus location. But those plans never panned out; instead, the men’s basketball team will be
COMICS PUZZLES
playing in the good old Klotsche Center. The Klotsche poses problems; mainly that it does not comply with a few of the Horizon League mandated rules. The arena, for example, has only about 3,000 seats, whereas league rules require 5,000. But the Horizon League inspected the facility and reported that with a few adjustments, it would give UWM an exception to the league rules and allow the men’s team to play there. Meanwhile, the Student Association still has the funds collected from the $25 segregated fee – reaching approximately $2 million dollars for the two years it was collected. The Klotsche Center Improvements Act authorizes $1.1 million dollars of that fund to be used for Klotsche Center