MADISON, Wis. — The city of Madison attorney’s office has issued municipal complaints against three University of Wisconsin-Madison students with fines totaling more than $86,000 in connection with a house party the students hosted last month, Madison police said. Madison police said officers responded to 37 N. Brooks St. shortly before 11:30 p.m. on Sept. 11 and found a couple of hundred people inside the campus-area home. Officers learned most attendees were paying $5 per cup in order to consume beer from half-barrels, police said. “We heard bragging that there might be upwards of 200 to 300 people in a basement of a house that certainly wasn’t designed for that,” said Sgt. Tony Fiore.  Police said the residents of the home – Travis Ludy, 21, Mitchell Klatt, 20, and Kevin Tracy, 20 – were uncooperative with officers and were cited with more than 130 counts including: dispensing alcohol without a permit; procuring alcohol to an underage person; and adult encouraging underage alcohol consumption. Police said the two 20-year-old defendants were also cited with underage person possessing alcohol off licensed premises. “We obviously had a party — it was game day — like most people around here. Ours got a little out of hand,” Ludy said. “We were at the door, trying to kick people out, telling everyone to leave. People just kind of sat around here — obviously it got the attention (of the police),” Tracy said. In all, the citations issued to the three students totaled more than $86,000. “I thought it was a joke — $30,000 for having one party, each? That’s obnoxious,” Tracy said. I have less than $100 in my bank account. We’re college kids.”

Ummmmmmmm......am I missing something here? Like it sounds like this was a Saturday gameday in Madison right? Look I'm no expert on the state constituition, but I'm between 150-200% sure that gameday's in Madison are treated like thunderdome: no rules apply. Article V subsection 2A I believe. So the only conclusion I can come to here is that the police officers who doled out these fines must be new? Because I've been to Madison on a football gameday and to be honest 200-300 people in a basement sounds kind of tame. Like these guys must have had some stank beer to only have a couple hundred people at their house. So if I were Travis, Mitchell, and Kevin I don't think I'd be bragging too loud about having a bush league party on gameday.

In any case I understand cops trying to make a point here, but 86 G's sounds a little excessive no? I mean if these are typical college kids you may as well have fined them 8.6 million dollars if you wanted to catch headlines, they've got just as good a shot at paying that off as the fine they're staring at now. Not to mention it sounds like they were actually trying to get some of these hooligans out of their house. And if it was 11:30pm the day of an 11am kickoff they've got  as good a chance of paying this fine down as they did of getting people moving after 14 hours of drinking. Like what are these cops going to do during Mifflin if they're issuing fines during a random Saturday house party? Issue 45 million dollars worth of tickets? Bottom line is these officers need to pump their brakes a bit, ticketing underage drinkers on a college campus is a slippery slope for everyone involved.

PS: Can you imagine if this becomes a trend? If we start ticketing every underage drinker in college I'm pretty sure we could erase the national debt in a week. Like wha't's the point of college if you can't drink....learning? Pfft.

Double PS: Sign #2243 that I'm getting older. A) Just the thought of a house party with 300 people made me uncomfortable. B) I was scoping tickets at Camp Randall for the Ohio State game. Two years ago it wasn't even a question: student section all the way. Now? Old people section. Fairly certain I'd die by the second minute of jump around these days.