Burning Down the House: School Spirit Gone Crazy

Gregory — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 05:44:28 +0000

As I ran towards the crowd, I could feel the heat on my face and could hear the tribal-like whooping echo in the night air. Pushing through the dark figures, I finally reached the edge of the crowd. In the middle of the street students fed couches, chairs, and fences to a 20 foot high bonfire. Some students hung on tree limbs and used their body weight to rip down branches in order to stoke the flames. Suddenly, the flames shot higher into the air as a gas tank from a lawn mower was thrown into the fire and exploded. Everyone stood by, their drunken eyes amazed. I heard someone next to me warn people about the rubber-encased cable wire above our heads. It was starting to burn from the hot flames. I moved farther from the crowd and stood on a hill to get a better view. The county police and the riot squad, whose black uniforms and plastic body shields I had only seen on the evening news, stood on the outskirts of the crowd, helpless to the mayhem. From a distance, the fire fighters sat patiently in their fire engines watching the flames leap into the air. Suddenly, the sirens sounded and the fire truck started down the hill only to be stopped by a wall of screaming students, who were throwing beer cans. Finally, the police were able to disperse the crowd and quell the fire.

Student riots on college campuses are not unfamiliar in America. Only a few decades ago, students violently protested the forced enlistment of thousands of young males into the Vietnam War. Today, students participate in the same destructive, violent behavior on college campuses because their sports teams lose critical games. Such was the case in the description above after the University of Maryland Terrapins lost to their arch rival the Duke University Blue Devils in the national semi-finals of the NCAA basketball championships.

After about $35,000 in property damage, $500,000 in cable damage, and three serious injuries, many people, including students, wonder what caused the riot at the University of Maryland. The most logical response: the students were upset that they lost to Duke and were unable to advance to the finals. Wrong. Only three months before, riots also erupted on campus after Maryland beat Duke in the regular season. In this riot, a mob of students started fires on Fraternity Row. They broke down the metal goal post in Byrd Stadium, carried it half-a-mile across campus and pitched it to the flames. As a Theta Chi frat member told the Washington Post, “When we beat Duke, we riot, and when we lose to Duke, we riot. The police should accept it.”

College riots after sports games are not unique to Maryland’s campus, as in the past year riots have also occurred at the University of Arizona, Penn State, and the University of Connecticut. Why do intelligent, young college students resort to such unwarranted, destructive behavior? What causes their almost barbaric drive to invade strangers’ houses to steal furniture and food to throw into bonfires? I think there are two answers–alcohol and the basic unrestrained college mentality.
…to be continued..

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Burning Down the House: School Spirit Gone Crazy