Dear Tell All: Thank you for taking the students' side in the debate over chanting at Camp Randall football games ("Profane UW Chanting," 11/72013). You are one of the few people to acknowledge what the chanting is really about: fun. I get it that some people are offended by the phrase "Eat shit! Fuck You!" But you know what? I'm more offended by lots of other stuff I see on campus. How about the lack of diversity? Or the university's investment in fossil fuels? Or the binge drinking?
UW Chancellor Rebecca Blank and athletic director Barry Alvarez: Stop scolding us for having fun, and attend to problems that really matter.
Section P
Dear Tell All: You miss the point about the Camp Randall chant. In what way does this behavior, unique to UW, enhance the national reputation of our school? Is this chant, offensive to most people, the most clever idea that the best and brightest of our allegedly great university can devise? I think not. Rather it seems like a sniggering adolescent response of immature people, secure in their mob anonymity in getting away with yelling dirty words of which the grownups disapprove.
Come on, students, stop being an embarrassment to your school.
Well Mannered
Dear Tell All: Just wanted to remind everyone that the "eat shit, fuck you" chant was immortalized by Firesign Theater in 1970 (Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers), used exactly as you describe the UW students: "to reduce stern authority figures to sputtering disapproval."
Big Up
Dear Tell All: Just a couple of things I wanted to say to you regarding your comments on the chanting: Eat shit! Fuck you!
Being "playful" is so much fun!
Mr. H.
Dear Mr. H.: That's an interesting approach to teaching me a lesson. I said the UW students were merely being playful with their profane chant, so you aimed the profanities at me as a way of showing me how it feels.
But I'm not sure the approach makes sense. The UW students are just kids, and are directing their chant at no one in particular. By contrast, you are presumably a grownup, and are directing the chant at a single human being. In my mind, that makes the students silly and you creepy. Do you see the difference?
Do you have a question about life or love in Madison? Write Tell All, 101 King St., Madison, WI 53703. Or email tellall@isthmus.com.
