By BOWSER BEAR
Allegheny security officer James Little began Saturday night like any other night on duty: sitting and waiting for doors to unprop.
Little did he know he was about to become a hero in the fight against underage drinking in the 21st century.
It all began with a low loud groan coming from outside the former observatory-turned-security office. Once the moan began to cover up the sound of his television, Little resolved to investigate.
Outside, he found a nearly unconscious male student, age 18, lying on the sidewalk, clutching a red Solo cup.
The rest is history.
“I approached the student cautiously and asked, unsuccessfully, to see his ID,” writes Little in his new autobiography, Spare the Cup, Spoil the Child, which skyrocketed to #3 on the New York Times Bestseller List after his recent appearance on Oprah. “After it became painfully clear that the student was unresponsive, I did the only thing I could: I took his cup.”
Out of a sense of what he calls “a strange amalgamation of duty and boredom,” Little filled out an incident report and nearly forgot about the event until, almost a week later, the phone calls started pouring in.
Little’s heroism had not gone unnoticed. First reported in The Campus’s Crime Blotter, the story was picked up by the Meadville Tribune, and then national media.
It wasn’t long until President Mullen called a press conference to deal with the extensive media attention.
“Allegheny is very proud of its security officers, and especially Officer Little,” said Mullen in his speech. “We ask a lot of our security officers, and for Officer Little to go above and beyond the call of duty by implementing such an innovative strategy to combat the unfortunate problem of drinking on college campuses is truly inspiring.”
“I mean, if you take their cups, what are they gonna drink out of, am I right?” he added, chuckling along with the crowd.
Soon after the press conference, Little began penning his book while on a national motivational speaking tour.
Despite the fame, however, Little is still a modest and down-to-earth man.
“I absolutely plan on returning to my post at Allegheny once this all dies down,” he told the Campus in a phone interview from his new villa in Hawaii. “It’s where I’m needed most.”
Meanwhile, students at Allegheny are still reeling from Security’s new mandate to confiscate cups on weekends as a deterrent for binge drinking.
“I like to go out and have fun on the weekends like anyone else, but the risk is just too big nowadays,” said one female student, a junior who wished to remain anonymous. “Lose my cup? I don’t want to deal with the embarrassment.”
“What am I going to do, shell out $5 for a new one? Or hide an extra one in my purse? That’s ridiculous.”
Other students echoed her concern.
“Security said if they have to confiscate my cup five or six more times, they’ll take my name down,” said a male student, a freshman who also requested anonymity. “I don’t know what that entails, exactly, or how they’d know it was me, but I have no desire to find out.”
In related news, Computing Services is investigating a possible link between Allegheny’s “War on Cups” and a dramatic increase in searches for “fortyhands,” “franziltoe,” and “transferring,” but so far no theories have emerged.
