On Tuesday, I did something I do pretty much every Tuesday: I picked up a copy of The Reflector and flipped to what is quite possibly my favorite section, the Bad Dawgs section.
Part of me always hopes to find something so absurd I can’t completely wrap my head around it (“9:46 a.m.: Suspicious student wearing monkey suit was arrested for attempted assault with a banana. The student was transported to the mental hospital at Whitfield.”).
As soon as I looked at Tuesday’s Bad Dawgs section, though, my first thought was last Friday was not a good day to be a police officer. A total of 13 incidents occurred on Friday, and then nine more occurred Saturday and Sunday (though I think two of those were technically the same incident). I know weekends often have quite a few listings in the Bad Dawgs section, but come on, 22? What is Mississippi State coming to?
It’s not even that hard to stay out of the Bad Dawgs section. For instance, I find it extremely difficult not to speed on Coliseum Boulevard (for whatever reason, I have a bad habit of taking my foot slightly off the brake pedal), but speeding tickets aren’t typically included in the list of Bad Dawgs. To get in there, you generally have to go above and beyond something as potentially accidental as speeding. You have to make a heartfelt commitment to acting stupidly, something along the lines of theft, vandalism or harassment.
Admittedly, in Tuesday’s Bad Dawgs, there were a couple of stories that felt a little out of place. For instance, someone lost a cell phone, then that phone was located and the phone was returned. What a great story – it has an exposition, a climax (sort of) and a happy ending. It sounds like it might work as the premise for a low-budget Disney/Pixar movie.
As far as I could tell, there was no “bad dawg.” It wasn’t the student for losing the cell phone, was it? Surely it wasn’t the person who turned it in to the police officers or one of the officers themselves. Perhaps the real “bad dawg” was left out of the story to make it fit on three lines. I don’t know.
But aside from entries like that, I was sorely disappointed in Tuesday’s Bad Dawgs section. Two more people got arrested for DUIs? That’s not interesting – that’s depressing. What is our world coming to when DUI arrests outnumber the incidents with crazies in monkey suits?
And that’s not especially uncommon. I can’t think of a Bad Dawgs section recently that hasn’t left me more disappointed than amused.
So on that note, I’d like you to read the following two sentences aloud:
“I will do everything I can to stay out of the Bad Dawgs section of The Reflector. But if I must do something stupid or irresponsible, I will at least wear a monkey suit to make the article interesting.”
Now, you probably didn’t actually read that out loud, but let’s pretend you did. In that case, way to go! You’ve committed to making our campus a better place. Hopefully, that’s a result of your staying out of trouble, but I understand there are some people who are going to engage in stupid and reckless behavior no matter what I say.
If you’re one of those people, I’d like you to know that you are making things quite unpleasant for the rest of us. The least you could do is give us something interesting to read about.
McNeill Williford is a senior majoring in industrial engineering. He can be contacted at [email protected].