The school year has barely even begun and we are again on the subject of off-campus rioting. After the riots during last year’s football season and again in the spring, there is a concern among students and officials alike that beer-fueled meatheads may take to the streets, setting dumpsters ablaze, destroying cars, throwing bottles at riot cops,and defiling the streets of our fair city.
After the student body last year failed to show any sort of objection, our university president instituted a new Code of Student Conduct. This new code allows the university to prosecute offenders who commit crimes off-campus. Individuals who are students at this fine institution are now held liable by the university when they have a drunken lapse of judgment and throw an empty beer box onto a Dumpster fire.
Let us think of the implications that this new tolerance policy has on off-campus life. The officials of this venerated school of higher learning can now overstep the bounds set by campus and reach into our lives in the city of Columbus. The university has no business involving itself in the affairs of students off-campus. When a student violates a law on campus property, then university officials can take action. Their jurisdiction ends where campus property ends. When a student steps off said campus property, he or she ceases to be a student, but rather a citizen of the city of Columbus.
If an individual commits a crime and is apprehended by the good, honest, hardworking riot police after a good beating with the truncheon, he or she is jailed by the city, charged by the city, and if convicted, penalized by the city. He or she has paid for what’s been done. Now, with this new code in place, if this individual is a student, he or she is punished again by the university, when the crime did not take place at a university sponsored function or on campus. The repercussions could be suspension or even dismissal. The person is punished twice for the same crime.
The president of our fine university has even attempted to take further action by involving area landlords in his new quest for a cleaner, safer campus area. The ultimate goal of this effort is to have the landlords evict students or even non-students from their homes if they host or participate in a large party that degenerates into a riot. Roll that one around in your mouth a few times and get the taste of it. Eviction. Some poor student may not only get booted from school, but run out of the town as well, just because he or she thought a party might be fun.
Perhaps the most offensive measure taken by university officials is the request of local supermarkets and convenient stores to cease selling beer in glass bottles. The director of off-campus student services, Willie Young, was quoted in The Lantern saying it doesn’t make sense to sell beer in bottles because they’re dangerous. Apparently, college students are not connoisseurs of beer to be able to taste the difference of bottled beer. This is by far the most laughable thing that university officials have considered risky. I suppose that area stores shouldn’t sell metal dining utensils, or glass drinking vessels. Maybe there ought to be warning labels on the bottles: Do not throw at police, the Surgeon General says it might be dangerous.
First, if individuals are rioting, they’re going to find something hard, sharp, and heavy to heave at cops, whether it be a bottle of beer, a bottle of soda, a rock, or any other sort of debris that may be lying about. Second, there is a considerable difference between the taste of bottled beer and a canned beer. I am a college student, and I appreciate the taste of a finer beer after a hard week of class and work. To assume that all students are Natty-swilling Neanderthals with no other intention than to get uncontrollably drunk and shout at the top of their lungs and chuck heavy things at police is not only unfair, it’s ridiculous.
Rioting was a problem last year, and I sincerely hope it will not continue to be one this year. Chipping away at our freedoms, increasing police presence and threatening our homes, and more importantly, our education is not the manner to combat this issue. The president of this university believes in a clean, safe, free educational environment. I guess that freedom has limits. I hate it here.
Eric Harrelson is a senior in English. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].
