I realize I am a dinosaur, and many things have changed since I went to college, but at least when students rioted in the '60s, it was about a war.
Students at the University of Kentucky rioted after their team lost in the finals of the NCAA basketball tournament. I suppose you could say they were disappointed and decided to vent outdoors.
This article says at least 17 couches were burned. Why is it that people in the South burn couches when they riot? Where do they get these couches? Are there a lot of living rooms without couches in the South? Is there a market for asbestos couches?
Not to be outdone by the Wildcats, students at the University of Connecticut rioted because they won the NCAA title. I can understand celebrating, but rioting?
College students riot when they lose and riot when they win.
Lacking powerhouse basketball teams, students at the University of California Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara City College apparently have to invent a reason to riot. Every spring they take to the streets for a weekend called "Deltopia." This year's event resulted in 100 arrests and 44 injuries requiring treatment at a hospital. Last year there was a death when a woman fell off a cliff.
Instead of rioting, maybe they should spend more time studying. The UCSB student newspaper published a piece called "An Open Letter in Defense of Deltopia" written by a student who wisely chose to remain anonymous. The letter is stunningly stupid in both syntax and theme and must be read firsthand to be fully appreciated.
In case you don't have time, here are some excerpts from that apologia:
Do not forget the student activism that has taken place within this community over the course of its inception.
I assure you, the urge to rage will long outlast the budget of Santa Barbara to keep sending in large numbers of police.
They treat the UC students as if they didn’t have to work hard to get here, and they treat the CC students like they’ll never amount to anything of substance. Contrarily, SBCC and UCSB are beacons of the educational process in their own respects.
To those lobbied against the students, you should definitively decide how much animosity, brutality and prejudice you are going to harbor and exert on the students who call this place home.
If this is an example of what these "beacons of the educational process" are turning out, rioting about the faculty and the curriculum might be justified.
