Of Course We’re Going To Riot
Penn State students making their point by destroying property.
You can fire the university president, and you can fire the head football coach. You can fully cooperate with authorities and enact whatever painful, pragmatic measures are necessary to restore respectability to a tarnished institution. But what, Penn State officials must be asking themselves, can be done to reeducate the misguided students who rioted after the announcement of Joe Paterno's termination? While the allegations against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky apparently reveal a systemic failure to properly notify police and child welfare agencies of reported abuses, the destructive behavior of students on Wednesday night is indicative of another ingrained dysfunction.
Many of the young adults quoted in a New York Times account of the incident were disturbingly cavalier and defiant about the violent student reaction to news that their beloved coach had been suddenly and unceremoniously axed. "It's not fair," claimed one of them. "The board is an embarrassment and a disservice to the student population." Note the adolescent egocentrism in that remark. The young man is upset because firing Paterno for failing to fulfill a moral obligation to actively prevent further instances of child abuse impinges on his needs as a student. It's like a bratty kid kicking the fireman because his Halloween candy melted.
Another student observed, "Make no mistake, the board started this riot by firing our coach. They tarnished a legend." Here we see the transference of culpability that is all too common among teenagers and immature adults. The board started this riot. Really? You mean it wasn't the girls who danced on top of a parked SUV in heels, or the guys who tore down light poles, or even the throng that tipped over a news van? This line of reasoning suggests that by firing Paterno, Penn State officials effectively issued a riot mandate. They tarnished a legend. Really? Might Jerry Sandusky have tarnished the legend? Perhaps former graduate assistant and current assistant coach Mike McQuery and former university president Graham Spanier eroded a little of the luster? Might the janitor who observed one of Sandusky's alleged rapes and that janitor's supervisor have contributed to the decay by their silence? And is it possible that even Joe Pa himself might bear some of the responsibility for the dulling of his own legend?
What practical choice did Penn State have? The reputation of their university is at risk. The ugly stereotype of an amoral institution that worships the lucrative potential of a successful collegiate football program is coiling around campus like a poisonous snake of notoriety. To honor Paterno's suggestion that he simply retire at the end of the season (at age 84, not much of a concession) would be to imply that a football legacy does indeed take precedence over honorable behavior. It would send a message that Penn State is okay with their representatives eschewing ethics in the name of following the letter of the law and nothing more. That might pass muster among some of our more ruthless business corporations. A public institution of learning, however, cannot survive as a Machiavellian defender of the bottom line. No matter how much firing Paterno hurts Penn State, not firing him would be even more damaging.
This reality seems to be beyond the ken of the rioting students. Perhaps that is not so surprising, as college life can be a strange dichotomy of exposure to a world of ideas while remaining practically isolated from the concerns of the world. You're treated, for the most part, like an independent adult, yet your mind may still resemble that of an adolescent. You might awaken to the existence of real social injustice and consequently see a maturation in your thinking, or you may be content to drift through classes and sniff out the next party. Your conception of what is and is not fair might still be defined by whether or not you get what you want.
Furthermore, young Penn State students (and even some of their parents) have never known Happy Valley without Paterno. If football is indeed sacred at PSU, then its scriptures according to the student body might as well commence with, "In the beginning, there was Joe Pa." It is understandable that the firing of Paterno might be perceived by some of them as a sacrilege. I can see how they might take it personally. What I cannot fathom, though, is how any of them can twist the situation into an entitlement to riot.
The Times quotes a 24-year-old aerospace engineering student as rationalizing, "Of course we're going to riot. What do they expect when they tell us at 10 o'clock that they fired our football coach?" We might hope that anyone six years into adulthood would have a broader perspective. Has he any knowledge of the history of civil disobedience? Does he have any idea of his own privilege in relation to those who struggle for the same freedoms? Did he watch any footage of courageous Arab dissidents liberating their countries from the oppression of dictators? Might it ever occur to him that vandalizing private property is a wildly disproportionate response to a university board of trustees firing its football coach?
Probably not. Looking at a photograph of the targeted news van in mid-topple, I see not the grim, determined countenances of righteous indignation but rather the thrill of revelry. The participants in this destruction do not strike me as conscientious students who have concerns beyond their own comfort. Rather than having been handed a mandate to riot, they appear to have found a convenient excuse to play. Caught up in the frenzy, they could make themselves believe that overturning the news van was a brave political statement about the culpability of irresponsible media. And when police ordered them to stop and advanced upon them, these deluded students could actually envision themselves as the oppressed.
I have a message for them. It appears that there are some young men who once innocently found out in the most tragic way what it is like to be truly and violently oppressed by someone in a position of power, and it happened right on your campus. And because no one stepped up to stop it before it happened again and again, you must valiantly endure your own personal tragedy of a tarnished football legend.
November 18th, 2011 - 01:14
Exactly!