We Want To Riot

By TG BRANFALT JR.
Staff Writer

PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 14, 2011

College kids and their riots.

Is this a generation’s new favorite past time?

Last Wednesday night, Penn State took the high road (from a public relations standpoint) and fired long time football coach (and living legend) Joe Paterno following a scandal involving his former assistant coach. The former coach, Jerry Sandusky, allegedly molested young boys during his tenure at Penn. Paterno had reported an act he had knowledge of, but did not immediately fire the coach. Beaver County Times reporter Mark Madden claims that Sandusky was ultimately asked to retire in 1999 “in exchange for a cover up.”

The cover blew off of this story last Tuesday and when Sandusky was charged with 40 counts of sexual abuse.

Unlike any of our capital region colleges, Penn State is football crazy. Joe Paterno is immortalized in bronze on the State College campus. The firing of Paterno, at 10 p.m. Wednesday evening, quite literally lit the fuse for a Penn State riot.

Back to the beginning.

Should this be seen as a growing concern? In our own neck of the woods, almost one year ago, there was a “riot” just a few blocks from the Saint Rose campus.
I use the quotes there quite deliberately.

What happened on Parade Day 2011 was not a riot. It was mayhem. It was drunken debauchery at its most obscene. But a riot, it was not.

A riot has a purpose, a cause, fueled by pure anger. Try telling a soccer hooligan that Parade Day was a riot. Try telling the Penn State students that Parade Day was a riot.

The Penn State students acted out because they felt an injustice had occurred. Many interviewed by the mainstream media conveyed that they felt Paterno’s firing was unjust. He had reported the incident he had allegedly witnessed, so why was he now, a decade removed, being punished? Many people apply to Penn State because of the history and success of their football program. Joe Paterno is a proven winner. Nobody applies to UAlbany because of their football team. Saint Rose doesn’t even have a football team. I attended UAlbany for my undergrad, when they were still trying to shed the label as a party school. People applied to UAlbany because of its reputation as a drinking school.

So here’s the thing: meddling with Penn State’s football is like meddling with our upstate New York drinking.

Now hear me out before you get all up in arms about me “promoting” boozing.

I was asked to write this piece with a comparison of the two riots in mind. As I stated earlier, I do not see much of a correlation, but both incidents were sparked by the culture of the kids attending the schools.

Both were seemingly senseless; far less senseless than the incidents that occur at the Occupy cities, which in Oakland for example, have resulted in riots.

Are the kids that flipped the news van in State College different from the kids that flipped the Ford on Hudson?

Absolutely.

Should this type of destruction, regardless of excuse, occur in a “college town?”

Probably not; not for reasons of football and shots at 7 a.m. anyway. The fact remains that when a large number of youths are put in a reasonably small space, events like this are all but unavoidable.

We (and though I am in grad school I will use “we” here) have reckless energy. We tend to make, sometimes, inexcusable mistakes. And that does not make us wrong, it makes us human.

And really, at least the damage done by these “riots” is merely to property, not to the psyches of young boys that have little chance to defend themselves.

Although, I cannot help but to think that at the heart of these incidents is a generation looking for its voice.