Morgantown Bans Patio Furniture Because WVU Students Keep Burning It All

We need to talk, West Virginia University.

You have some good things going for you, namely a football program that doesn't incite paralyzing depression and a beautiful college town full of fine locals who are probably very nice and say things like, "Supper's ready."

But you are hurting yourselves and the people of Morgantown, Mountaineers. It started with your smack-talking basketball team feeding its flailing, ineffectual limbs into the Kentucky log chipper, and now your penchant for postgame arson is infringing on the personal liberties of the citizenry.

According to WVPublic.org's Jesse Wright (h/t Laken Litman of For The Win), the city of Morgantown, West Virginia, is banning all patio furniture within city limits due to the unabated burning of said furniture by students after football and basketball games. 

Morgantown City Manager Jeff Mikorski said the ban is a stopgap in the veritable forest fire of less-than-controlled burns initiated by students over the past decade.

"Over the last 10 years, we've had over 3,000 street fires because of the quick ability to bring furniture from porches and put it into the streets and put them on on fire," Mikorski said. 

The law was passed April 7 and covers "upholstered furniture...in yards or unenclosed porches."

What this amounts to is a ban on a fixture of unleveled college patios everywhere—the outdoor moldy couch. You'll find one of these peeling, half-rotten mammoths moldering next to a beer pong table on the majority of campus live-outs, and most of them go neglected but unmolested for years.

Of course, there must certainly be a cross section of locals who also own these swampy things. What are they to do? College kids aren't the only people in the world who enjoy sinking into a mildewing loveseat and feeling the crinkle of last fall's leaves as they open another Keystone. What of their loss?

It's really quite simple, West Virginia. 

@DrCarson73

Get it together—for your hosts and for yourselves.

Dan is on Twitter. A rain-soaked porch-couch is a privilege, not a right.