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Letter to the Editor
Apr. 28th, 2009 11:37 amSo a current, local event in Newark, Delaware (where I lived for 12 years) brought up shades of ancient history for me, and I responded with an online letter to this story about the City government and police shutting down yet another student-organized spring party.
I wrote:
It is a problem inherent to college journalism that anything that happened locally more than 4 or 5 years ago is ancient and unknown history. Current Review staff should check their own annals from the spring of 1988, when the duplexes on Wilbur Street (I lived at 94 at the time) revived a years-dormant tradition and hosted 'Wilburfest' in their collective backyard, with two stages and a dozen bands. Wilburfest (and the smaller but also joyous Skidfest) took place for several subsequent years but were eventually (and literally) run out of town by the City and the police. There is a wealth of history pertinent to the current story, and The Review reported on it as it happened.
Chapelfest and I did not coincide in Newark—at least, not so as I'd notice; I moved to D.C. in 1996—thus I honestly don't know what the event was like; but if it bears any resemblance to its Wilbur Street and Skid Row predecessors, it must have been more than a mere excuse to drink. True, there are and will always be many students who seek no more than that excuse. Nonetheless, in 1988 Wilburfest was first and foremost a community event, giving local bands and artists a forum to be heard, and donating 100 percent of revenue to the local charity Emmaus House (homewardbound-de.org/emmaus.html). We cleared the fest with the City and hired off-duty Newark Police officers as security. We bought lumber and built a main stage. We hired a sound engineer. We rented port-a-potties. We carded and stamped entrants for age of majority. Etc. With proper planning and management such things can be done right and safely.
Alas, there were some observed instances of public urination. That really was what did Wilburfest in, I think: not student drinking per se but the end result thereof. From what I could gather living in Newark from 1988 through 1996, the City was systematically stamping out public urination under the rubric of keeping students 'safe'—their efforts aided by contumelious and breathlessly idiotic prohibitionists within the student body itself, the very sort of Caitlins (in my day they were called Heathers, says the old-timer) who've tut-tut-tutted here.
The ongoing story of Newark's crusade on student-organized events (just a chapter in the Townie-Student Wars) has been troubling and sad for at least the last two decades—probably much longer, given that Newark before 1984 or so is, to me, ancient and unknown history. One of y'all should run for mayor.
Gordon (Gary) Geise
Review Editorial Editor, 1994-95
I wrote:
It is a problem inherent to college journalism that anything that happened locally more than 4 or 5 years ago is ancient and unknown history. Current Review staff should check their own annals from the spring of 1988, when the duplexes on Wilbur Street (I lived at 94 at the time) revived a years-dormant tradition and hosted 'Wilburfest' in their collective backyard, with two stages and a dozen bands. Wilburfest (and the smaller but also joyous Skidfest) took place for several subsequent years but were eventually (and literally) run out of town by the City and the police. There is a wealth of history pertinent to the current story, and The Review reported on it as it happened.
Chapelfest and I did not coincide in Newark—at least, not so as I'd notice; I moved to D.C. in 1996—thus I honestly don't know what the event was like; but if it bears any resemblance to its Wilbur Street and Skid Row predecessors, it must have been more than a mere excuse to drink. True, there are and will always be many students who seek no more than that excuse. Nonetheless, in 1988 Wilburfest was first and foremost a community event, giving local bands and artists a forum to be heard, and donating 100 percent of revenue to the local charity Emmaus House (homewardbound-de.org/emmaus.html). We cleared the fest with the City and hired off-duty Newark Police officers as security. We bought lumber and built a main stage. We hired a sound engineer. We rented port-a-potties. We carded and stamped entrants for age of majority. Etc. With proper planning and management such things can be done right and safely.
Alas, there were some observed instances of public urination. That really was what did Wilburfest in, I think: not student drinking per se but the end result thereof. From what I could gather living in Newark from 1988 through 1996, the City was systematically stamping out public urination under the rubric of keeping students 'safe'—their efforts aided by contumelious and breathlessly idiotic prohibitionists within the student body itself, the very sort of Caitlins (in my day they were called Heathers, says the old-timer) who've tut-tut-tutted here.
The ongoing story of Newark's crusade on student-organized events (just a chapter in the Townie-Student Wars) has been troubling and sad for at least the last two decades—probably much longer, given that Newark before 1984 or so is, to me, ancient and unknown history. One of y'all should run for mayor.
Gordon (Gary) Geise
Review Editorial Editor, 1994-95
