Is Mosse Really Riot-Proof? We Tricked 100 Business Majors Into Finding Out

MADISON, WI - The UW-Madison campus is home to a diverse set of buildings. From the picturesque Bascom Hall to the beautiful lakeshore views of Memorial Union, many are praised for their majesty and timeless feel. Some, however, are not as highly regarded, from the dingy old Lakeshore dorms to the dreary bowels of Van Vleck Hall. But there is one building more infamous than all the rest, an architectural nightmare that thousands of students and faculty endure every semester: the Mosse Humanities Building.

Mosse opened in 1969, a sprawling Brutalist behemoth on the corner of University and Park, and quickly became regarded as a massive architectural failure. Its problems need no introduction, from leaky ceilings to labyrinthine hallways. Despite this, it remains one of the busiest buildings on campus. Mosse’s long and shameful history has left it the target of many rumors regarding its design and purpose. One in particular has prevailed since Mosse’s origin: the idea that Mosse, which opened during the height of the Vietnam War, was constructed as a riot-proof bunker designed to discourage student anti-war protests.

University officials have long denied this rumor, yet observing its narrow, disconnected hallways and inward-sloping walls, it’s not hard to see where the legend comes from. And when plans were announced last year to demolish the building in 2027, it seemed as though the rumors would finally crumble. That is, until the Misnomer stepped in. One of UW-Madison’s core tenets is the idea of “sifting and winnowing”, and we here at the Misnomer believe that it’s our appointed duty to sift and winnow to the bottom of the age-old question: Is Mosse really riot-proof?

To test this out, we of course needed to incite a riot. And while our legal counsel (a law student I bothered at the Law Library until he talked to me) informed us that this was a Class A Misdemeanor and could result in jail time, we held firm to our belief that science does not rest in the face of legal concerns. So, we needed a way to start a riot that couldn’t be tied back to us. This required participants who would not ask questions and would simply cause an uproar given the right conditions. We knew just the group: Business majors. The plan was simple, yet elegant. We hung signs advertising free Zyns, Tweas, steroids, and Geek Bars at the Nick, Grainger Hall, and on signposts on Langdon. All of them advertised the same time and place: Wednesday, 4 pm in the Mosse Courtyard.

When the time came, we were excited to find that we had amassed over 100 clueless volunteers. Now that the participants were in place, all that was left to do was to start the riot. Several Misnomer operatives blended in with the crowd and began to cause chaos by claiming that there was a limited number of free items, and they would have to fight for them while blasting Sheck Wes’s “Mo Bamba”. Another operative pushed one particularly aggressive frat guy into another, setting off a chain reaction of violence and mayhem. The riot had begun.

At this point, the setup was complete, and it was time for us to observe the results of our experiment. Seeing that the horde of people was well within 25 feet of Mosse, a University building, we quickly alerted UWPD, who immediately disregarded the electric scooter thefts they were investigating and sent all units to attempt to quash the riot. Retreating to a planned observation point atop the Elvehjem Building, we watched as the police scaled the sloped ramps and clashed with the rioters. Perhaps it was the maze-like hallways or the fact that most were already inebriated by the time the cops got there, but the rioters were subdued within half an hour of the police arriving, with very few managing to escape. The end-of-the-day statistics were shocking: UWPD assessed a record 118 citations and $35,792 in fines.

So it seems that Mosse is riot-proof - for now. If there’s anything I learned from statistics class, it’s that a sample size of one is never good enough. In order for us to properly fulfill our scientific obligations, we must conduct more trials, with different variables, to truly test Mosse’s impenetrability. So if you’re ever bored and don’t mind getting arrested and potentially tear-gassed, come on down to Mosse and see if we’re holding another giveaway.