Krampus, the demonic version of St. Nicholas, has by now descended from the Alps of Europe to visit quite a few students of The University of Alabama. He has certainly meted out punishment to the students who, at the behest of The Machine, voted for Cason Kirby in the Tuscaloosa municipal election. Doubtlessly he has also cracked the whip across the backs of the students who’ve become so blindly drunk at the Irish Pub Innisfree that they’ve wrecked havoc on the nearby Historic District.

Meddling by students in the local election has effectively disenfranchised permanent residents of District 4 who voted for Kelly Horwitz, who was considered by many to be the most effective School Board member. Her Machine orchestrated replacement Cason Kirby will muck around for four years before heading for greener pastures. Machine supported School Board Chair Lee Garrison, perhaps best known for his unique phallic Halloween mask, and Kirby make quite a pair. The word “dum-dum” somehow comes to mind.

Students who have gone wild in the Historic District after being expelled from Innisfree have racked up quite a record of destruction and obnoxious behavior. There was an incident last year of an Innisfree patron as getting in a fight at the pub, being pursued by police and finally being pulled off a roof of a house in the Historic District.  One soaking wet student was arrested who had fallen into a fish pond.  A co-ed had been banging her fists on all of the windows and doors of a home before she was accosted. Sideswiping parked cars, urinating in rose bushes and littering with beverage containers in the Historic District is also commonplace. One resident of the Historic District has said, “Home invasion is the new normal here.”

Surely those who’ve enabled the bad behavior of students will have been visited by Krampus too, but their sorry lives are probably so miserable already that they’ve hardly noticed the additional pain.