As you might have guessed...

...I'm not precisely my chipper self today. A good deal of it has to do with this: I happen to live within spitting distance of UMD. Close enough to smell the burning mattresses, in fact.

Now, normally I'd be saying that "It's not so much..." blah blah blah, and then go into what really bugs me about that, but I'd be lying: I'm appalled by the tradition of after-game rioting that seems to have cropped up in UMD. We're talking setting things on fire, random acts of property damage to cars, houses and fixtures and a general example of drunken stupidity evocative of the worst stereotypes of college students: believe it or not, non-college people live in college towns, and it's their taxes that take a hit... cripes, I'm sounding like my father. No, wait, my father would be calling for mass expulsions and time in the county lockup. Which doesn't sound all that bad, actually.

Still, do you know what really, really, really annoys me (not to mention Wonkette, whose entry set me off again on this)? This:

Rejoicing in the university's momentous sports victories -- especially over such conference rivals as Duke University -- by committing acts of civil disobedience has become so ingrained that dozens of students brought cameras yesterday to document themselves in front of the police cordon on Route 1.

"I've never been to a riot before, and I wanted to get in on the action," said Oba Opesanmi, a freshman wearing only gym shorts and socks who had just posed triumphantly in front of the line of stern-faced police officers. "We killed Duke."

"My parents went through this kind of thing with protests of Vietnam," said Jason Zarro, a sophomore computer science major. "Even though this is not of the same magnitude, it will be part of my history."

If there's a hint of irony anywhere in those three paragraphs, it's well hidden.

Comments

[bob mcmanus]

"the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. . . . Men make their own history but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past."

Zeppo

Appears millenials have one truly screwed-up take on the sixties...just keeps getting worse and worse...we boomers are to blame, such a terrible generation :)

[Catsy]

These people really need a better hobby.

I propose virtual Lego modeling. Much more constructive. Then, if they feel the need to taunt the police, they can do something like this.

[Moe Lane]

"I propose virtual Lego modeling."

Ah. Another initiate in the Great Work, I see. :)

[Phil]

Great minds etc., etc.: http://www.phildennison.net/archives/000207.html

[zoe kentucky]

Ugh. I just don't understand this at all-- wanton destruction as a sign of pleasure over the outcome of a basketball game? With the rise of UMD tuition, you'd think someone would realize that these riots cost the school money-- as well as prestige.

As a 28-year-old all I can say is "what is wrong with the youth of today?"

[Thorley Winston]

Moe Land wrote:

No, wait, my father would be calling for mass expulsions and time in the county lockup. Which doesn't sound all that bad, actually.

Your dad would be right then but add “make restitution” to the list as well. If it takes them fifty years working at the kind of job they’re stuck with without a college degree, all the better.

[Thorley Winston]

Land=Lane of course

[Gary Farber]

I live in Boulder, Colorado, where last year a law was passed preventing people in the central -- read "University" -- district from keeping couches on their porches.

Why? Because rioting kids kept seizing the couches and burning them in happy fun time after a good triumph.

It was a stupid law, in response to stupid kids doing stupid things.

Do not taunt happy fun couch. On the other hand, people who riot should get three months in the slammer, and find out how truly much fun it is. Rioting should not be a thrilling privilege.

[Slartibartfast]

Oh, sure. Blame the couch-owners for providing riot-fodder. That couch was just askin' for it. It was provocatively upholstered and of demonstrably low moral character.

[Thorley Winston]

Why? Because rioting kids kept seizing the couches and burning them in happy fun time after a good triumph.

What kind of sick-o thinks it is “happy fun time” to go out and destroy other people’s property?

[Gary Farber]

I've not seen a survey, but I have the impression that much of the time the couches that were tossed in the street, doused with flammable liquid, and joyously burned, while everyone danced around, looked for cars to flip, and so on and so forth, as the police hesitated to commit any act that might make a parent paying tuition angry, were owned by some of the celebrants.

Though not always, apparently.

I'll note in passing that the couches were probably worth all of $10 at the Salvation Army. That folks' valued property was destroyed isn't really the point. The point is more that rioting in the street after a football/basketball (I think it's much more a football thing here -- you may have heard that there's a bit of an emotional investment here at the University of Colorado, which has led to supplying hookers and strippers to recruits, rapes, and so on) is seen by a lot of kids as a privilege, if not a right, and, as the Wonkette piece quoted by Moe indicates, is in their tiny little heads (I won't suggest they have "brains"), akin, somehow, to battling for civil rights or against a war, or some other Grand Cause Of History.

Follow the logic:

Civil rights marchers were beaten by police.

Anti-war protesters were beaten by police.

They were beaten in a noble cause.

If we all are in the streets, and taunt the police, trying to get them to beat us, we must be noble, too!

Really, some of them seem to think like that.

With enough beer in them.

As a result, within a certain range of blocks in central Boulder ("the Hill"), it is now illegal to have a couch on your porch. Way to punish the right people!

The People's Republic of Boulder, which welcomes any who want to save the lesbian, granola-eating, crystal-owning, third-eye-using, pacifist, praire-dog-cuddling, whales, is enough to turn the most fervent lefty into a libertarian gun-owner.)

[Gary Farber]

Need I say that the right to have couches on your porch is the right to be free?

I thought not.

"In an effort to combat malicious comment posting by scripts, I've enabled a feature that requires a weblog commenter to wait a short amount of time before being able to post again. Please try to post your comment again in a short while. Thanks for your patience."

Wow, way to discourage commenting!

[Moe Lane]

I'm sorry, was that last bit showing up on this site? If it is, 'tis not by my hand.