Springfest – noun.  The official name given to a yearly gathering at University Park in Grand Forks, ND.  The event occurs every May on the Saturday before the University of North Dakota has final exams, starting before noon and finishing late in the afternoon.  In addition to the events in University Park, many bars in Grand Forks hop onto the Springfest bandwagon by opening at 8 am, offering early-bird drink specials, and some even serving breakfast.

Many students at the University of North Dakota look forward to Springfest, a raging party held at University Park, as a way to “relax” and “de-stress” after a long semester and right before final exams.  Due to several concerns, I have chosen not to participate in Springfest for the reasons illustrated below.

Reason 1 – Promotion of Drinking at UND

The University of North Dakota is often concerned with how they rank in terms of binge drinking.  According to The Princeton Review, UND is ranked 18th of all US colleges in partying.  While many students are proud of this high number, I’m sure that UND administration is not – especially considering that UND ranks #5 of all US colleges for students who study the least.

UND offers activities on the weekend to attempt to reduce its rank as a party school, but some say that UND might not be doing enough.  “Nightlife” is a program that offers events on and around UND’s campus on the weekends as a safe alternative to drinking.  The residence halls at UND also offer events for their residences such as movies, games, etc.  What is concerning to me is that Springfest occurs in University Park, just a couple of blocks east of main campus buildings.

If UND really wanted to reduce the level of alcohol consumption, I feel the UND administration should speak out against Springfest.  It appears, however, that they have more pressing matters to deal with, like wasting the last few years changing the school nickname (but I digress, that’s another discussion altogether).

Finally, the most important thing to consider about UND’s apparent disregard of Springfest is its proximity to Finals Week.  Springfest is held the weekend before Finals Week – the most critical week of the year for most students, in which they take cumulative exams to measure what they’ve learned throughout the course of the semester.  I’m no doctor, but imagine if you will what a full day (and potentially weekend) of binge drinking will do to a student’s test-taking ability immediately before they have a grueling week of exams.

Reason 2 – Unequal enforcement of the Grand Forks Noise Ordinance

The Grand Forks Noise Ordinance has been a concern among the student population since it was passed in 2006.  Vaguely written, the Grand Forks Noise Ordinance allows for enforcement of the law based upon an officer’s opinion of what is “unreasonable noise”.  The noise ordinance, quoted below, states that anyone breaking the noise ordinance law is subject to a Class B misdemeanor – up to 30 days in jail, a $1000 fine, or both – which many feel is a little harsh for simply “being too loud”.  What is also interesting is that a similar law in Virginia Beach was ruled unconstitutional (source; Dakota Student).

Unequal enforcement of this law has come up in the past.  Last fall, a UND student spent two nights in jail for a noise ordinance violation at a downtown apartment.  What is interesting about this case is that the mentioned student was living in an apartment above Level10, a busy downtown Grand Forks bar.

“I can understand if someone is cited for a loud party in a residential neighborhood or something like that, but I live above the loudest nightclub in town on the busiest night of the week.” (source: Dakota Student)

As a member of the UND Greek Community, I have seen unequal enforcement of this law first-hand to us and our Greek neighbors.  What is interesting, though, is the enforcement by the University Police Department.  Many houses have recently been cited for simply having 10 or 15 people on their front lawn on weekend night, cited as “a disturbance to the public”.  What I would like to know is how are 10 to 15 people on the front lawn of a private house more of a disturbance than the all-day Springfest party in a public park?  It should also be noted that University Park is only 1/2 block away from the Greek housing that so frequently “disturbs the public”.

The Grand Forks Noise Ordinance:

9-0110. Noisy party or gathering.
(1) No person shall participate in any party or gathering consisting of two (2) or more people when said party or gathering gives rise to unreasonable noise likely to cause significant discomfort or annoyance to a reasonable person of normal sensitivities present in the area, in consideration of the time of day and the residential character of said area or building.
(2) When a law enforcement officer determines that a gathering is creating such a noisy disturbance, the officer may order all persons present, other than the owner or tenant of the premises where the disturbance is occurring, to disperse immediately. No person shall refuse to leave the premises after being told by a police officer to do so.
(3) Every owner of such premises, or tenant in charge of such premises, who has knowledge of the disturbance shall cooperate with such police officer and shall make reasonable efforts to stop the disturbance.
(4) The following shall be prima facie evidence in any prosecution under this section of the owner’s or tenant’s violation of this section.
(A) As to tenants, and owner if owner resides on the premises, if twice or more on the same day or if on successive days, any law enforcement agency is called upon to enforce the terms of this section either by citizen complaint or by personal investigation of a police officer.
(B) As to the owner if the owner does not reside at the premises, if after the owner receives written notice of three (3) violations of this section by the owner’s tenant at any premises owned by the owner in the City of Grand Forks within a six-month period, and after receipt of such written notice, the Grand Forks Police Department is called upon to enforce this section either by citizen complaint or by personal investigation of a police officer.
(C) Noise of such volume so as to be clearly audible at a distance of fifty (50) feet from the structure, or building in which the party or gathering is occurring, or in the case of apartment buildings in the adjacent hallway or apartment, shall be prima facie evidence of unreasonable noise in violation of this section.
(5) For the purposes of this section, “premises” shall mean:
(A) The building actually leased or owned by the person occupying the leasehold or real estate;
(B) The appurtenant lot and outbuildings of said leasehold or real estate; and
(C) The common entryways and exit ways of said leasehold or real estate whether or not these ways are privately controlled or commonly available to other tenants.

(Ord. No. 3546, § 2, 9-18-95; Ord. No. 3589, § 1, 5-20-96; Ord. No. 3807, § I, 8-2-99; Ord. No. 4113, § I, 1-3-06)

Conclusion

From what I mentioned above, it becomes clear what a large factor is in this situation: money.  Springfest is put on by local Grand Forks businesses and provides a large amount of income for them along with tax revenue for the city (not to mention the income from residential noise ordinance violations).  If you live in Grand Forks for any period of time, you’ll quickly realize that the people getting the majority of sanctions are the ones without economic ties to the town (i.e. students); while downtown Grand Forks bars such as Gilly’s have outdoor speakers aimed into the street but never incur noisy party violations themselves.

While I don’t believe that my little post here will put a stop to Springfest, I do hope it causes people to think more about the impact Springfest has on the university and the surrounding community.  I’m sure that I’ve said something to spark a debate with my readers, so feel free to send me your thoughts on what I’ve said or anything that you may think about the situation.

Now, if you’ll please excuse me, I have to make house repairs caused by drunks from this weekend.

Last week was Spring break at UND.  While many others were relaxing at home or on some sunny beach, there were some that aren’t that awesome and stayed back in Grand Forks.  I was one of them.

My Spring break was not a complete waste of time though.  I used this time to do some work around Beta.  Specifically, I concentrated on the Dining room floor, which was in desperate need of refinishing.  With the help of a couple of other Beta’s, we were easily able to accomplish our task.

Here are a couple of pictures of the floor before we started.  It’s pretty easy to tell where the most traffic is on the floor – right where everyone slides their chair.

The floor looks significantly better after it’s been sanded.

One coat of stain and three coats of polyurethane later and we have a finished product.

Since we were done with the floor earlier than expected, we decided to sand and repaint the radiator heater covers in the dining room.  Here are the covers sanded and primed.

Once dry, the heater covers are installed.  They look way better than before when they had been painted with a brush.

The dining room with all furniture returned.

You can view all of the pictures from the project on Beta’s website.

Friday was the last day of the spring semester at UND. With it comes the end to class and the beginning of summer fun. I know that I haven’t written any real content for my website in some time now, so I hope this post will get me back to writing more. In this post I cover some select projects from select Industrial Technology classes.

Industrial Technology Classes

IT 202

In January I had my first experience with 3D capabilities of AutoCAD. Although it may seem intimidating, 3D drawings in AutoCAD are very enjoyable. For my Midterm Project I was to draw a 3D model of a Prairie Style house. [More information on Prairie style houses and Frank Lloyd Wright cab be found here.] Some renderings of this project can be seen below.

After the completion of our Midterm project, we were immediately assigned the final project. We were required to design a 5 acre yard for our recently designed house. The yard was to contain some standard features, along with some of our own features. When the project was complete, I had exactly 39 hours, 40 minutes into it. (Total is Midterm and Final projects combined.) Although it didn’t turnout exactly as I had wanted it too, I am still happy with the final outcome.

IT 203

My other interesting class of the semester was IT 203, Manufacturing Processes. In this class we were shown the basic processes of manufacturing, using a lathe and mill. After watching the “boring videos”, learning equipment safety, and performing some simple operations, it was time to learn hands-on. Our only project for IT 203 was to manufacture all of the parts necessary to build a small scale steam engine. By completing this project, we were exposed to many operations in manufacturing.

Many different pieces of manufacturing equipment were used for this project including:

• Grizzly Mill
• Old Bridgeport Mill
• Cummings Lathe
• Clausing Lathe

Grizzly Mill

Cummings Lathe

Completed engine parts

Completed Engine Parts

Completed engine

Completed Engine

After the engine has been graded and returned to me, I will post some video of it running.

Other Industrial Technology Projects

During the past semester I received my first instruction in CNC equipment. The Manufacturing Lab at UND has a ShopBot CNC router similar to the one pictured below.

As simple introductory projects we designed and cutout wood signs. These wood signs contained a combination of 2D images and 3D text. The process is very simple: Draw sign in AutoCAD, import into ShopBot software, and generate the tool paths that the router will understand. Then sit back and watch your work be created for you.

Below are a couple of images of signs that I created.

AC/DC Wood Sign

Beta Theta Pi Wood Sign

Conclusion

Each of the above classes were simply introductory classes in each of their subject areas. As I am only a little ways into the Industiral Technology program at UND, I can expect several more projects with increasing levels of complexity to come in the future. I hope that you enjoyed reading this post and I hope to have more like it in the future.

Please let me know your thoughts on the projects or anything else in the comments.

An updated version of this post can be found at http://www.techerator.com/2009/04/tomato-firmware-increased-transmit-power-does-more-harm-than-good/