I had my first run in with university Police down here today for the heinous crime of playing baseball. Or actually, for watching baseball. There are some baseball fields out behind the FAR residence halls and I got a invite to go play some ball around 4:30 so I walked over there, sketchbook in hand. I'm not an athlete, I'd rather draw the sport. So The game didn't last long, because at 5:00 we were informed that the field was closed and we were "asked" to leave via a woman with a megaphone whose message was almost inaudible. While the rest of the criminals decided to hop the fence to get out of the field, I chose to walk with another hooligan through one of the many (I counted four on the way in) open gates. Our little gang of evil doers met in the parking lot to decide what was going to happen next. The crowd began to break up, and finally the remaining members of the party decided it was time to seek shelter from the icy wind. Just as we were going to leave the open parking lot we heard a call from behind us. "Don't be leaving now that I'm here!" A figure in the distance cried out. "You got me out here, now you need to stay!" Soon, as the husky fellow worked his way towards us, we could see it was a member of the local Police department. He seemed angry, but that may have just been the large pole that was lodged in his backside. He demanded we take out our ids and a member of our group asked what we had done. He became furious and repeated the question "Do you want to take it there?" several times, until the young student apologized and complied with his request. He proceeded to ramble that we could be hauled off to jail for what we had done. Officer Friendly was under the impression that we had gone to great lengths to break our way into the maximum security fortress that is the baseball field, and you know, not just walked through the open gate. He told us that we would all be facing jail time and expulsion from school for walking onto an open field and playing America's Pastime. I found the situation a tad ridiculous, we had simply been playing baseball, would have rather we had been shooting heroin or off drinking somewhere? For a college with an extremely high assault rate, it's good to see the local cops not wasting their time with a bunch of kids looking to have good clean fun. Someone else in the group found it to be equally stupid and when the cop caught a glimpse of a smile, he went off. "Do you find humor in this situation?" "No, officer, I'm not laughing." "I didn't ask you if you were laughing. I asked if you found humor." You can't win with these guys. Luckily his better half showed up and proceeded to tell us where we could go to enjoy America's Sport, but that wasn't until after the cop made a snap about us kids and our parents paying for our college education. And all that for what? Enjoying a nice fall day with the crack of the bat and the smell of fresh cut grass. Sheesh.