MSA considering fan behavior task force

Issues with respect and tailgating have caused problems for MUPD.

By Amanda Wysocki

Published Dec. 9, 2008

Following concerns over rowdy fan behavior at football games, the Missouri Students Association is considering instituting a fan behavior task force.

The idea came up in 2007 when MSA President Jim Kelley ran for office and made Frat Pit a priority on his platform, but it has been tabled since then. Now that Kelley's term is almost over and MSA President-elect Jordan Paul is on his way into office, the topic is once again being brought up.

Kelley will meet with Wellness Resource Center Director Kim Dude later this week to come up with some plans for how to correct some of the problems of fan behavior for the next season.

"The general framework will be a broad base of students," Kelley said. "A lot of those groups will be from the Student Leadership Advisory Council and Greek groups. The idea is to get a bunch of smart people and an expert in the field to figure out how to come together as students and also with athletics."

The council will be a permanent group, dealing with the dilemma and then focusing on how to make things better afterwards.

"There are some places around the country with major Division I programs that have gotten this thing right," Kelley said. "Places such as the University of Florida and Ole Miss have pretty good models for fan behavior issues and we are trying to emulate those."

Although Frat Pit was a key part of Kelley's platform, Paul supports the committee as well and hopes to see it succeed throughout the rest of this school year and into next year.

For Paul, the biggest area where the fans could improve is basic respect and courtesy.

"It would be nice of people to be a little bit more responsible," he said. "This would be more along the lines of being a little bit more courteous to other MU students, visiting fans, players and officials."

Paul has noticed poor behavior from fans at many games, both on and off the home field.

"I went to the Big 12 Championship game and even though it wasn't home field, there were some less than nice things going on," Paul said. "I understand if it's a school like Kansas or one of our other archrivals, but the fans can be kind of nasty. We've got a reputation around the conference for that."

Issues with respect, tailgating and pre-gaming have caused problems for the MU Police Department, especially in previous years.

"We did have more problems at the Research Reactor parking lot," MUPD Capt. Brian Weimer said. "We tried to curtail problems there in order to make it safer for everyone attending the game."

For some games this season, the parking lot at Reactor Field has been closed until just a couple hours before the game in order to stop people from tailgating and disturbing the peace several hours before the game.

At the end of every football season, MUPD sits down with the athletics department in order to look at after action reports and come up with ways to make things better for next year's schedule, Weimer said.