Affiliation

Due to some recent accusations I feel the need to clarify my position. I am not in anyway whatsoever connected with The Warrior, the student publication at Marquette University. I am an independent student journalist, who chose the moniker of "Warrior Watcher", because it defines what I do. I observe the actions of MU and its student body, many of whom still feel affinity towards the "Warriors" mascot from prior to 1990. As such, I am the "Warrior Watcher", and not The Warrior.

Who Cares About the Truth When we can Publish Lies?

The Marquette Tribune has never been accused of journalistic accuracy, nor being a place where grammar counts, but today it has sunk to a new low. In an online post the Tribune named a student as a suspect in a crime, without any information from the Milwaukee Police Department. Their source was an anonymous student who claimed to have witnessed the incident. The article goes into detail and accuses a male student, whom I will not name, of stabbing another student. The Tribune felt that it had enough information to name this student, and directly implicate him in stabbing a fellow student. Congratulations Marquette Tribune, your journalistic skills have sunk to an all time low. Gossip rags would hesitate to sink this low, but the Tribune just had to get out in front of everyone else. It even published before our friendly neighborhood private security forces sent out an email which misconstrued the entire incident. That's right, not even the wannabe cops of DPS announced anything about the incident, meaning that either A. something terrible did happen and they are covering it up, or B. nothing actually happened and the Tribune jumped the gun on this one. According to several sources who have information regarding this incident, the Tribune has misreported what happened. Since I do not know what actually happened in the incident I will not speak to the Tribune's details, but rather critique it for reporting on what happened. The fact that the article was written is bad enough, but to actually name a student, and claim that he stabbed someone, goes well beyond the lows to which the Tribune has previously sunk. This student, at least according to the information provided by the Tribune, should be reasonably considered dangerous and a suspect in at minimum assault, if not assault with a deadly weapon, or attempted murder. Way to go Tribune, you really out did yourself this time. Let's just hope that in the future the editors, who all collaborate with the administration by the way, control themselves just long enough to get some facts before they publish a bunch of rumors.

Here is a link to the terrible article:

http://marquettetribune.org/2010/02/14/news/student-stabbed-in-schroeder-hall/

Who Exactly Does Marquette Hire?

In light of today's Marquette Tribune article regarding the cost of going to private universities in the United States, I have decided to analyze the number of people in a variety of departments at Marquette, in order to gain a better understanding of where all of our tuition money is going. The largest single collection of staff at Marquette is the Dental School which has 301 professors and staffers. This makes sense given that MU has the only dental school in Wisconsin. Other departments seem to have an excessive number of staff. 157 people work for University Advancement, apparently attempting to "advance" the state of Marquette by raising more money to be sent to the endowment and the basketball team, while the rest of us eat crappy dorm food and pay $28,000 a year to go here. Speaking of the basketball team, 91 people work for Intercollegiate Athletics, aka the Athletic Department. Given the massive salary of "Buzz" Williams, one can easily conclude that this department receives a lot more funding than say, the History Department with its paltry staff of 54, which by the way includes the graduate students. The fact that twice as many people work on raising money than teach history is questionable to say the least. Another questionable staff decision is to have 94 people work for DPS, and only 50 in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. Apparently we need two fake cops for every language teacher at MU, rather than, for example, hiring new language professors and teaching more than a handful of languages here. The president of MU and the senior vice president each have 4 staffers, yet only two people work at MU press, and you wonder why no one gets their books published at MU. Wouldn't it make sense to combine the staffers for the President and the Senior Vice President, and spend the other money on creating a legitimate University Press? No, that would make MU an academic institution, rather than being a for profit venture. MU also has 7 full time staff in the "Office of the University Architect" and 9 in the "Office of the General Consul". Apparently MU needs 7 architects and 9 lawyers on hand for all of the building projects and lawsuits. Or MU could just hire an architect when it needs one, for example, if it ever built a humanities building, and could have one or two lawyers on hand in case it needed to deal with an issue. The unnecessary bureaucracy at MU is the reason that tuition is so high. Top heavy departments which do little or no good, or like DPS just commit felonies, keep the university from spending money on professors which would make it a better institution. The misguided belief that building new buildings will make MU a great school is absurd. How about hiring some new professors, keeping the good ones that we have, and creating a legitimate university press? Maybe if Fr. Wild spent more time focusing on academics and less time caring about the basketball team MU would be a real school. Until then I hope that eveyrone likes paying $28,000 a year to be part of a for profit venutre which has a company basketball team.

Armed Robbery

Two DPS officers approached a pair of students in an alley on 14th street just north of Wells St. These officers then demanded to now what was in the backpacks of the students, upon finding beer, the officers then confiscated the beer, and took a fake identification from one of the students. This is of course illegal. I cannot go up to you take your backpack, search through it, and then confiscate any items in it, regardless of whether or not you can legally possess said items. DPS cannot do this either. Therefore, since they used their arms as a means of intimidation, the officers are guilty of armed robbery. If I walk up to you pull a gun and demand to see your backpack, and if it, for example, has marijuana in it, I cannot confiscate it, no, that would be armed robbery, even if I left my gun in its holster, that would still be armed robbery. Once again DPS flaunts the law and fail to realize that its officers are not in fact police officers, but rather security guards. So if in the future at any point in time a DPS officer approaches you anywhere that is not on campus property, do not let them search you, but rather fight back against this assault on freedom, and call the police if they try to search you.

DPS Threatens to Murder Area Residents

On the night of Friday September 11, 2009 a DPS officer threatened to murder several area residents by driving over them in his cruiser. The residents were standing on the sidewalk at the entrance of an alley. When the officer approached he ordered them to leave, which was beyond his authority. He then yelled at the residents. When they still stayed put, he threatened to run over all of them with his cruiser, which would have, in all likelihood, resulted in their deaths. As such, he did in fact threaten to murder them. The officer then contacted his superiors. Two commanding officers arrived, along with 5 other officers in 4 squad cars. The officers then interviewed the residents, and concurred that they had not broken any laws, and were within their legal right to refuse to obey the orders of the DPS officer. Moreover, the residents were within their right to refuse to turn over their identifications to the DPS officer, given that he is not a police officer. The commanding officers then apologized for the violent behavior of the DPS officer, and assured the residents that it would not happen again. Nevertheless, this scenario si horrifying, in that a DPS officer threatened to murder people by driving them over with his car. Hopefully in the future DPS will better screen its officers to make sure that they do not threaten nor attempt to murder anyone else.

I again thank my anonymous sources for providing me with the details of this tragic incident.

Swine Flu knows where you live

That's right fellow warrior watchers, swine flu is now on campus, and is spreading pretty fast. According to the university there is only one confirmed case, a female living in Schroeder, although MU won't disclose that last part. In addition, there are several suspected cases living in Straz, although again the university is not commenting on this. One of these cases reportedly ate in the cafeteria potentially infected everyone who was eating there. In addition according to several anonymous sources, a Straz cafeteria employee was sent home today with flu like symptoms, although again this information is not being discussed, and these sources were told only to say that the individual was not feeling well and were informed that the phrase "swine flu" was not to be said in the cafeteria.

It appears that in light of these recent cases the university is attempting, poorly, to cover up the actual extent of swine flu on campus and in doing so is merely increasing the likelihood that it will spread quite rapidly. Rather than being proactive and public about every case, MU is relying on students to determine whether or not they feel healthy enough to go to class, and if they don't they are to call Student Health Services (SHS) in order to find out if they have symptoms which may be swine flu, or H1N1/novel H1N1 as the university prefers, and then quarantine themselves. It would be much more helpful if the university released a daily chart of where the outbreak is occurring. For example if it were the case that the flu was most prominent at Schroeder, it would make sense for students to avoid that cafeteria, yet without any information students are effectively gambling and hoping that they can avoid contracting a deadly virus, which many epidemiologists fear will be as bad as the Spanish flu of 1918 which killed millions. If the outbreaks continue to worsen and people get sicker and sicker, it will be interesting to see if the university continues to try to keep everything under wraps, or if it owns up to the numbers of ill on campus and tries to intervene before something tragic happens. Let us all hope that MU is smart enough to get proactive, by passing out masks and hand sanitizers and isolating sick students.

I would also like to thank all of my anonymous informants without whom posts like this would not be possible. I owe many thanks to these individuals for their inside information into the workings of the university.

More Assaults on the Rule of Law

Apparently DPS not only believes in assaulting the rule of law, but is so arrogant, that it actually brags about its actions. Take for example its response to a fight on the corner of 16th and Wisconsin which occurred at 4:22pm on Tuesday September 1. 10 DPS officers responded to the fight, and attempted to intervene. Given that they were not present when the fight began, they of course had no reason to intervene. They were then brazen enough to call the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) and request their aid. Not request that they come and do their jobs, no, they were there to help DPS be cops. Because that completely meshes with Wisconsin State Law. Oh wait, no it does not. DPS has no right to intervene then, and calling MPD to aid it only shows how absolutely arrogant DPS officers have become. They actually think that they are cops.

Continuing on the theme of DPS officers think that they're cops, they have continued to brag about illegally imprisoning two individuals on the night of August 10-11. For the uninformed that is a Class H Felony in Wisconsin, and as much as DPS, and MU, think they operate in their own universe, they are in fact subject to the laws of the state, yet instead of apologizing, they portray themselves as heroes. Just like all the other people that run around detaining other people, oh wait those are usually serial killers or people taking hostages, but not DPS, no they are heroes.

This past week DPS continued to think that it was a branch of the Milwaukee Police Department, on the evening of September 3, a DPS car "aided" MPD officers in purusing a suspect who was guilty of violating an open container law. Which, by the way, is a municipal offense, and is only a ticktable offense. Yet, MPD, which has clearly forgotten its role in upholding the law, asked DPS, a private security contractor and not a police force, for help in catching a kid who was given a ticket. Now if that isn't great police work I don't know what is. Run down a kid to give him a ticket, and break the law by having a private security contractor get involved in the chase, instead of doing something useful, like arresting people who commit felonies.

In a second instance last week, MPD again asked for DPS assistance because of someone urinating in public. The fact that MPD ran after someone for this and needed DPS' help for this, is pathetic on the part of MPD, in that it can't even do its own job. In addition, it is sickening that MPD is calling DPS over and over again to "aid" in detaining people. DPS cannot legally act in this capacity, they are not nor have they ever been police. They are private security contractors, much like Xe and ArmorGuard. In fact it would probably make us all safer if the university replaced DPS with one of those groups, I mean they have tanks, and helicopters, and are experienced in ignoring any form of law and just doing whatever they can to oppress people. So really we have two options right now, either fight back against oppression, or embrace it wholesale and hire mercenaries to "protect" us from "criminals".