My family is new to Platteville. We moved onto a block that includes a church, the church office building and our house. We moved from a college town and have generally found college towns pleasant. Never once did I think our location would be abused by the future graduates of UW–Platteville. How wrong could I be?
In our family we have a tradition of putting out plastic candy canes along the front walk. We’ve been doing this for a decade.
We’ve had to replace them over the years due to fading, breaking in the cold snow, and front-yard football. We have it down to a science. We “plant” them in November and pick them after the ground thaws.
This year we “planted” 10 canes. It was a giggly-good family time. The next weekend we were down to seven. Thanksgiving weekend we were down to six, which is where we stood until Saturday morning, when we woke up to find zero.
This resulted in a sobbing 7-year-old because “we no longer have any candy canes,” and a teaching moment for all three of our children about stealing, respect for others’ property, how bad this feels, and standing up for what’s right.
Those are lessons our three children have learned, but at least some UW–Platteville students apparently have not.
I know this is not how all college students are or even how all UW–Platteville students are, but the cold-hearted disrespect of a few has ruined the UWP student for our family.
I note the new Pioneer Pete in a jaunty running position. I thought that was clever. Now I suspect he’s not running to get his mining job done, but rather running after stealing something out of someone’s yard.
Jannan Roesch
Resident
