Glutton for PWNishment

OK, so we’re not talking about the famed May 4, 1970 Vietnam War riots at Kent State, we’re talking a massive frat bro-off riot. College Fest, the event which spurned this infantile display, was a non-university event held last Saturday night. It was planned to celebrate the end of the semester. Evidently, things really got out of hand after some young woman was allegedly pushed over forcefully by a police officer after inquiring why her friend was being arrested. According to The Daily Kent Stater, the school’s flagship newspaper, over 50 students and partygoers were arrested in total after a barrage of destructive violence. At one point, in a sophomoric display not that dissimilar from Ohio University’s jubilant celebration following a football victory back in 2005, some College Fest attendees set a couch/random furniture pile ablaze. Afterward, police fired pellet guns into the crowd and shot tear gas into the teaming street to disperse aforementioned inebriated youths. 

Having seen this puerile scene first hand, after being goaded into embarking down the street by a curious pal, I can say that this riot was about the most “college” thing I have ever seen. Not being a KSU student myself or being of the mind to have a death/arrest wish,  it was just as well that we get the fuck out of there. There was some unnamed young woman who evidently raged a bit too hard and was already passed out on her friend’s front porch. Said woman was wearing muddy white pants and was on the ground while her friends drank casually around her. Nice.

The street was literally covered in broken beer bottles and other miscellaneous alcohol debris. Muscle Milk fueled “men” were chucking glass in all directions, to the dismay of many passers-by. Hoards of barely cognizant drunks managed to break through their Coors Lite haze to shout, “fuck the pigs,” at assembling police. But could you blame them? It’s likely they have experienced systematic oppression at the hands of law enforcement officers while living in ritzy Cleveland suburbs. Mind you, this was all before the actual “riot” had even commenced.

It isn’t as if this scene is anything entirely new. OU’s Halloween celebration and myriad spring time fests always elicit their fair share of privileged white male rage and I’m sure this occurs at a gaggle of other universities around the country. For example, this past weekend students at the University of Minnesota threw a tizzy fit after rapper Talib Kweli was removed from the bill of their Spring Jam after a travel glitch. But really, guys. All I could think about when I saw the riot cops marching in formation down the street was the unavoidable irony. College kids used to riot for something, not just over irritation because “the pigs” are shutting down their disgusting, raucous parties. 

We’re never going to be our parent’s generation. We’re never going to have to lay it down the way they did for civil rights, equality or anything else. Unless something radically changes, no one’s getting drafted, so I doubt anybody’s going to feel compelled to risk getting shot to protest a war. It’s hard to reconcile the Romantic notion of college idealism when the university setting is currently more about getting gluttonous drinking out of our systems than anything real or substantial. Current activist movements just don’t have the gusto that they once did and most of them advocate downright impractical or highfalutin lifestyles. So, I guess with that in mind, thanks Kent State. Thanks for reminding us that, even though you’re known for getting PWNed by “the man” for something real, that you really just wanna bring the mothafuckin’ ruckus.