I know I’m not alone in my dismay over the extent of the toilet-papering of Oak Creek Parkway during South Milwaukee High School Homecoming week.
Now while I don’t necessarily agree with local blogger Jerrianne Hayslett’s link between the toilet paper and sewer backups — I’d like to see more science on this before tying those two issues together — she is right on when she writes this:
Looking at it yesterday reminded me of places I’ve been that is strewn with litter and what a terrible impression that makes on a community. Trashy.
I’m no fuddy-duddy (or am I one simply by using the word “fuddy-duddy” in the first place?), and I can appreciate a good Homecoming tradition, and prank, as much as the next person, but this time it went too far. Trees were covered in toilet paper for block after block down the parkway, east from 15th Avenue to nearly Chicago Avenue. And a good deal of it still remains.
My biggest concern? Not sewer backups, but aesthetics. Oak Creek Parkway is a South Milwaukee jewel, and the toilet paper defaces it, especially once rain and wind wash it from the trees and send it to the ground. Hayslett’s word describes it best: trashy.
I did inquire about this in the days after it happened with our police chief and the school district superintendent.
Chief Ann Wellens wrote back, and she is right when she says the department doesn’t have the resources to prevent this, especially when an estimated 100 students took part. (Although police did confiscate more than 200 rolls of toilet paper before they were used this time).
Instead, I think this is a school district issue, and South Milwaukee Superintendent Dr. Rita Olson did contact me to say they were working to clean it up.
She also extended me an invitation to join the district’s Vision and Planning Committee, which begins meeting next week. One goal of the group of about 35 students, parent, teachers, administrators and community members? Develop “long-term solutions in working with our youth.”
I appreciate the invitation and look forward to the process. And who knows? Maybe we can come up with a solution to toilet-papering, too.
South Milwaukee Blog 
The toilet paper is nothing compared to the weeds ooops I mean prairie grass growing all around the school. When people visit me from other cities they ask me, what’s up with all the weeds in front of the school? Talk about embarrassing.
I don’t find the TP to be a problem at all.
But I certainly do agree with the above post. The school with its “natural environment” is what looks absolutely ridiculous and trashy.
It would have been better if the kids would have limited their TP-ing to the school property. Then it would have remained just a school issue and been handled as such instead of cluttering up our beautiful Park system.
Ditto on the comments above regarding the weeds (and for that matter, the swamps)…umm, I mean “prairie grass and wetlands”. I wonder what would happen if I left my lawn grow like that instead of mowing it every week?
Perhaps the police just need to be a bit more clever than the students who planned their vandalism during the SMPD shift change. This gave the students a good 30 min+ to do damage without any police intervention. SMPD has a whole year to figure out how to out-strategize high school students during a week-long period in which they know students will be planning to TP the parkway again. Who says our students aren’t learning anything in school??? Looks like they were able to plan and execute a crime right under the noses of the police.
Have to wonder how many tickets were written and if any arrests were made. How about community service cleaning up the parkway for those who were caught?
I’ve heard some people say the TPing was pretty. My suggestion is that those people give their addresses to the school so students can make their houses “pretty” next year.
.. as a parent of a senior, and a past senior, and one who used to be a senior herself: this is a HARMLESS tradition. And I know when I drove up the morning of the ‘reveal’ I found it VERY pretty.
Seems to me that things could be FAR worse, such as the graffiti sprayed all over the side of the building/s a few years ago. Whomever participated for the TPing had a good SAFE time. One would think that should be the most important thing to the residents of SoMo. It is to me, as one, as well as being a parent.
And that said, I think if the people who wanted to bemoan the mess and are busily calling in to other departments WANT to be helpful, how about keeping on those same departments when the roads in the parkway are NOT cleared of snow and ice EARLIER and BETTER. Not to mention the horrid potholes that develop under the bridge every winter. Again: safety for the students, some who are first time winter drivers. I know I call in several times a year and ask : WHY are they not cleared out? after nearly being sideswiped (mostly by parents I must say) because people have no where to drive.
Those are some REAL concerns that should be addressed, if you want to talk about the natural beauty of the parkway. How about we keep the roads fixed/maintained properly for the safety so one can drive through the parkway and enjoy the view.
Contact Supervisor Jursik if you have concerns with the parkway’s snow removal. Grant Park is already losing it’s full-time employees on Nov. 1st so they will be even more short staffed this winter and the 2011 county budget is looking no better.
As for the TP’ing job, I am all for holding a harmless prank the week of homecoming granted the students clean it up. When I TP’d with my classmates in 2005, we kept it to school property and had to clean it up the next day. It is pretty pathetic that there is still toilet paper in the trees on the county side of the parkway but yet again, who’s responsible to clean it up?