I'm fed up with higher education. Not because it chewed me up and spat me out without any useful knowledge or skills, but that, like the Republican warlords that run our country, they seem to hate the people they are supposed to represent. Namely, you know, us.

A few years ago Playboy magazine -- one of the last remaining outlets for independent thought (and other things) -- had a prescient article about the shift from American colleges as being places that treated their students as the adults they are, to authoritarian institutions with a sick in loco parentis complex that wants to regulate what students do with behavior, their bodies, and their lives.

If I'm remembering this article correctly (which is unlikely, since in defiance of my alma mater, I consumed quite a bit of alcohol during my stay in academia), there was a time when in loco parentis was the prevailing idea at colleges -- and that would be a time before the 1960s, at which point the horrors of the Vietnam War left many young adults wondering why their country would send them off to die in foreign rice fields but would treat them like children at home. This in turn gave way to a national movement in which young adults seized for themselves the respect and equality that they truly deserved.

Time wore on, I guess. As our society became more litigious and less righteous, many Univer$ities started to worry that letting their students (read: adults whose money filled their sizeable coffers) behave as they wish could put those same coffers at risk. At the same time, you see a political power being consolidated in the hands of people who push an agenda of "morality" that is completely at odds with the actual sentiments of the People. And so you see a systematic attack on the rights of students by their own colleges -- stuff like the cancellation of Yale's traditional nude Olympics and a national crackdown on the benign Greek system. During my time at Indiana University -- a university which cracked down on all students when they received national attention for those students having a good time -- there was a policy of encouraging professors to schedule more required classes on Friday in order to prevent students from keeping their Fridays free for Thrusday night recovery!

And then, this week, I read about the University of Wisconsion, of all things, strong-arming the local bars into eliminating weekend drink specials to keep students from exercising their legal right to drink. Keep in mind that things like 'minor consumption', 'public intoxication', and 'driving while intoxicated' are already quite illegal.

A few UW students decided that it was time to push back. They sued the bars (all of which caved to the University's protection racket) for colluding to fix prices. If the students action is successful, it would entitle all students who bought drinks after specials were eliminated to triple damages; which is to say that if you bought 4 beers a week at $4 each for 2 months under this policy and they used to be $1.50, those bars would then owe you $240.

I for one hope the students win and keep winning. I hope they use the money to combat not just the spineless bar owners, but power-hungry authoritarian universities across the country. Of course, they'll probably spend their windfall on beer, but that's their damn right, which is the whole point.