I arrived at the Boulevard Saturday morning at 8 a.m. I was preparing to setup for another Saturday of laughs, music, choice beverages and college football when I noticed a little sign taped to my tent space pole. It had a note about the Halloween game and said that Tailgating would begin at 3:30 p.m. and amplified music wasn’t allowed until 5 p.m. Now my first thought was, good thing I just ordered “The Best of Michael Bolton Un-Amplified” off of E-bay, a steal at $672 if you ask me. My second thought was WTF. However, it was early and so I rubbed my eyes and read the sign again. It said the same thing the second time around. My next thought was there was something very wrong with this situation. Actually, my next thought involved a 2×4, an avocado and polar ice fishing, but that is irrelevant to my point. Could the SUITS of the Hilltop possibly error so poorly that they single-handedly would ruin an experience this campus might not see for years to come? No, of course not. I mean these big wigs get paid big bucks to look out for the interest of this University! Right?But a strange feeling came into my stomach. I knew I had to act. In my four years on the Hilltop I butted heads with the SUITS more often than I argue with my Ma about why I look like the milkman and not my dad. Yet, this one isn’t about me, it is about the student body and the college experience.This is about the desire of the SUITS to fit into the Power Rankings in some important publications. This is about turning this University into a factory that churns out grads, requests donations and then brings in a new crop the next year. This is about ONE DAY in a school year that stretches over nine months. This is about so much more than football and yet it all comes back to the simple point. This is about an irrational and illogical Boulevard start time of 3:30 p.m. This is about a start time that proves this University isn’t working to improve the social experience or campus lifestyle. Do the SUITS really think that a late start time will keep kids in class if they would rather be out Tailgating?This just in – I just read online the other day that 127 percent of all college students skip class if THEY want to. So why make the effort to try and keep them there? Why not give them a chance to create a buzz that starts in the morning and gets bigger and bigger up until game time? Why not create an environment that Ford stadium hasn’t seen since the Kansas game in 2000. Why not shut class down and open campus up?Think about the poor marketing people in the athletic department who spend day after day trying to find ways to generate excitement. Then this gift, a nationally televised game, shows up on a national holiday and everything looks amazing. Until the SUITS come by and start peeing in all the Kool-Aid. Think about our new AD Steve Orsini and what must be rolling through his mind. Orsini shows up and a few months into his new gig he finds his biggest challenge comes from the top. The same people that should be on his side are jabbing him in the eye with a fork. I’m sure the argument is about not willing to sacrifice academics for athletics or something silly like that.Please don’t say that college is about academics and learning. College is about life and learning to make quality decisions. Sometimes this occurs in a classroom at a set time of day on a set day in the week, often this occurs outside the classroom in something known as every-day-life. Please don’t say the University requires a certain number of class days in a semester in order for the course to count blah, blah, blah. Then tell the professors (hush, hush) to hold class and maybe not show, wink-wink, nudge-nudge. I can’t begin to tell you how many un-official officially cancelled classes I had in college. What doesn’t happen can’t hurt. Right?Or maybe we just found another problem. Our own faculty doesn’t even bleed red and blue. Which, while I was in school, I always found hard to understand. It is the red and blue of the student body that makes the professors their green every year. They should be the biggest supporters. As far as I’m concerned they should all have a Mustang tattooed on their bottoms. Unless they graduated from TCU, then they have every right to not support us, however, ultimately I question the hire. I could sit here and rant and rave all day and continue to ask questions and make points. Unfortunately I ultimately know what questioning authority gets you. Nothing!So I’m going to answer my own questions, because if the SUITS did humor me with a response it would be some politically correct scripted B.S.

Dear Guy,We are sorry that you don’t like our 3:30 p.m. start time. Unfortunately we don’t care what you or anyone else thinks. We, the SUITS, have one objective and that is to run this place like a business. This school spirit and pride routine isn’t worth our breath to acknowledge and is getting quite old. The next time you have the gall to attack our position on an issue please remember we wear ties to work and sit in fancy offices so obviously we know what is best for us and our national rankings in the really important publications. Also, please don’t contact Coach Bennett, marketing in athletics or the AD, we like to humor them with meetings, but we really won’t listen to them either. Not very sincerely, SUITS

I guess even after a letter like that I still have hope. Hopefully my old journalism department will sack up and unofficially call off classes for the day. Setting an example that may catch on like a wild fire. If Professor Hopkins is still around maybe he will see the importance of this chance to bring the campus together and he will call the day off?Or maybe, just maybe, a light will go off in the head of one of the SUITS? The men and women in charge know the importance of campus unity, they are all smart individuals. They have graduated from their former University’s with prestige and have come here to the Big D to make SMU a better place for all. Right? President Turner graduate from Abilene Christian University and then went on to graduate degree successes from the University of Texas at Austin, he has seen what football can do for campus moral, pride and prestige. Heck, he came to SMU from Ole Miss a school that gets national attention for their tailgating experience at “The Grove.” Turner showed up in ’95 when the football program was still sinking from the Death Penalty. Now the squad is having the best start to a season since ’86 and the Halloween game could be a chance for SMU to declare to a national audience, “WE ARE BACK.” So of course he would want to put on the best event this campus has seen since the Regan administration was in office. It will be a shame if he makes such an enormous mistake and passes on this event. Just please know this, we paid $725 for the tent space. That includes six home games and on that sheet it says that the Boulevard is open at 8 a.m. on game day. Thirty plus alumni come out week after week to our tent in order to support the cause. If I want to take off work and spend my time out there how do you have the right to tell me no? We paid to be there. How can you justify charging me for one thing and then offering another? I know the SUITS hear me with def ears, so in sign language your decision makes me sick!

Guy Bellaver graduated in 2004.