The Five-Year Party: How Colleges Have Given Up on Educating Your Child and What You Can Do About It by Craig Brandon

Author:Craig Brandon
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Higher - United States - Evaluation, Education, Parent Participation, Academic achievement, College students, Academic achievement - United States, College environment, General, United States, College students - United States - Social conditions, Higher, Social conditions, Students & Student Life, College environment - United States, Evaluation, Secondary
ISBN: 9781935251804
Publisher: BenBella Books
Published: 2010-08-17T04:00:00+00:00

“Spontaneous” Student Riots

Most of the time, party school administrators do an excellent job of preventing the public from getting a good look at what goes on inside their campus walls. But when things get seriously out of control and a campus party turns into a riot, the community quickly finds out how dangerous thousands of intoxicated students can become. The police tend to stay on the sidelines until property damage begins or bonfires set in the middle of the street threaten nearby houses.

At Keene State College, there were dangerous riots when the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 and 2007. Nearly a thousand students, about one out of five students at the college, started fires, broke windows, turned over cars, threw rocks and bricks at police, and threatened to go on a rampage through the middle of town until they were turned back by dozens of city and state police who had been put on active duty to prevent the riot. Although these seemed to be spontaneous celebrations, my students showed me Facebook groups on which they had been planned weeks in advance. The goal was to create videos of the riot to be posted on YouTube, where you can still view them today.

Police, however, were monitoring the internet site and knew about the students’

plans ahead of time. They blocked the college entrances with patrol cars; officers, armed with mace, tear gas, Tasers, and even live ammunition, formed a line around the campus. Alcohol was, of course, the main fuel for the riot, which lasted less than an hour. Estimates of the cost to repair the damage and reimburse the police for overtime were more than $100,000, all of which was billed to the college and ultimately came out of tuition money.

Many of my more responsible students were appalled by this behavior. A columnist for the student newspaper wrote: “How exactly does lighting stuff on fire, littering and smashing car windows constitute celebration?” He called the rioters “moronic,”

and said it was simply the outlet for something else, “anger and rage fueled by the pent up angst and frustration felt by an entire generation against an establishment that doesn’t listen to them.”135

Many of these sports-based college riots grow out of tailgate parties in the parking lots of sports arenas right under the eyes of campus police, who stand by while thousands of underage students drink out of funnels. At Indiana’s three largest public universities, for example, the schools ban alcohol all week, but on game day administrators look the other way, allowing pickup trucks full of beer to drive into the parking lots, a flagrant conflict with the message of moderation that they preach the rest of the time. Some of these students get so drunk in the parking lots that they never make it to the game. Drinking starts at sunrise and lasts late into the afternoon.136

A party organized on Facebook in East Lansing, Michigan, near the campus of Michigan State, attracted four thousand students in April 2008.

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