Three more lives down the drain
The first is dead.
The second is the drunken idiot who pushed the first one into the street.
The third is the unfortunate person who drove over #1’s head.
Update: Turns out the kid who fatally pushed the other kid into the street was his best friend since childhood. So, the question now is should he be criminally charged? The kids who accidentally killed Danny Dahlquist were, so wouldn’t it be consistent to charge this kid too? I don’t think he should be, but then I didn’t think the Dahlquist’s friends should have been either.
March 10th, 2008 at 9:13 am
I’m just waiting for all the whiners to turn this into a Bradley University issue. I don’t understand why they have to use BU’s name in the headline. You don’t see “Manual student shoots 4″ or “Richwoods junior caught stealing” on the front page of the paper, do you? The PJS has is clearly bent on driving a wedge between the citizens of Peoria and Bradley University.
March 10th, 2008 at 10:16 am
“The PJS has is clearly bent on driving a wedge between the citizens of Peoria and Bradley University.”
Bradley doesn’t need the paper to help them with a wedge. Bradley is perfectly capable of producing its own wedges. They have been quite successful at it. Bradley and alcohol has been a long running issue on the West Bluff. If anything the Journal Star has turned a blind eye to the issue for many years. As the saying goes, it is all ‘good fun’ until someone gets hurt. Well, people are getting hurt.
Universities and alcohol are nothing new but it wasn’t so long ago that Bradley significantly increased it’s student admissions while at the same time not providing any housing for these new students. Correction, the new students got the dorm space and significantly more ‘upper’ class men were forced off-campus. The ‘upper’ class men have increasingly included sophomores and even a smattering of freshmen. This is when the real serious problems started to develop. Of course the ‘public’ was all so apologetic for Bradley, over how important it was that Bradley ‘grow’ to survive. Pfft. So today we are reaping what has been sown. This is the wedge that Bradley built.
March 10th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Until the city lets Bradley grow PROPERLY by letting them buy the land on which to build more student housing, there’s really no way around students living off-campus. Additionally, as someone who attended a major university and lived on campus for 2 years, I can tell you that where the students live has no bearing on whether or not they drink and do dumb stuff.
March 10th, 2008 at 11:55 am
This tragedy has nothing to do with Bradley. It could’ve happened anywhere.
March 10th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Where they live certainly has bearing unless you went to a university that utterly divested itself of any supervisory role. Dorms should have security in them (mine did), they should have Resident Assistants who are properly trained to deal with situations and to prevent them (mine did), dorms should have staff oversea the dorms to minimize the stupid stuff (mine did). I actually got more done and did better in school when I was in the dorms, than when I was shacked up with roommates in an apartment.
As to allowing Bradley to grow… it is the classic chicken and egg argument. They should never have allowed themselves to take on the additional students like they did, without having the housing to support them. If they were not able to secure the housing then they should not have ‘grown’. I just don’t buy the ‘we MUST grow argument’. Universities are not corporations. Growth in student bodies is not essential to their success.
So here we are with too many students living off campus. Well Bradley has a bunch of space in the arbors that isn’t being taken up by a parking garage. They could redo St. James apartments to increase density. They could…. scrap the unnecessary parking garage and build dorms. Then do alterations to existing dorms to increase the number of students in them. They could also down size their student body to a more responsible level. Bradley has lots of options. Of course they won’t take any of them.
March 10th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
PI,
I agree, it has nothing to do with the university. That was my original point.
March 10th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Moral of the story:
If you know your childhood friends are going to one college, you should choose another, as obviously you are safer living with total strangers.
March 10th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
I can’t believe there is any kind of a debate about this particular subject.
March 10th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
I agree Floyd. This has nothing to do with Bradley any more than it has to do with say, Peoria. This happens everywhere and it was an accident. As for Bradley not growing until they built housing, well, that is mind boggling. It is a private university that was in most cases “on the hill” long before any neighborhoods. Bradley is there to make money, and re-invest back into itself which means it charges for tuition. Prices rise as in heating, wages, electricity, etc etc so for Bradley to refuse students simply because they don’t have the housing is asinine. The dorms at Bradley do have security in them and Bradley has a police force. Like our city force, they can’t be every where. Ever been to ISU? I have and there are more students living off campus than on, same at Illinois State so to say Bradley has too many is, well, stupid. Doesn’t this statement come from the same person who always tells me there is plenty of on campus parking if you know where to look? Bull!
This whole issue of the death of this young man shouldn’t even be debated here. None of you, myself, included weren’t there so no of us know nothing other than what we read in the local rag. Mahkno, nothing gets by you does it?
March 11th, 2008 at 8:38 am
I’m removing myself from this conversation for good reason.
March 11th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
It is the People of the State of Illinois v the defendant. Families aren’t the only people affected. Imagine being the person who ran over the kid. Just going along minding your own business and bam you have run over someone. Unintended consequences aren’t the same things as accidents.