It seems that every college campus has to deal with a riot once in a while. The level to which they face it is proportional to the amount that heavy drinking and rowdiness are a pasttime at that particular college. What aggravates me is not so much the pattern of behavior itself (which seems to be some kind of weird biochemical response that mobs of college kids occasionally have to drinking.) It is the inevitable response from administration and community in the aftermath, which looks pretty similar each time.

TESC administration is busy making the case that last night's concert-goers were "mostly not Evergreen students" (similar to their premature statement in response to the recent rape by a masked intruder on campus: Administration "did not think it was an Evergreen student". How do you decide that a masked intruder is or isn't a student? Greeners don't usually wear that type of thing? I mean, come on, there were no suspects. They had no physical description, but they somehow had a strong suspicion that it was not a student?  And also, who cares?)

So while the school is playing that game, the community is hijacking the story and turning it into justification for their biases and an opportunity for politicking.

This looks like, "See, these greeners are the same anarchists that did blah blah blah protest, and this is what THOSE people do" or alternately, "See, this is what happens when you bring THAT kind of music into OUR community. It just attracts a bunch of OUT-of-TOWN, VIOLENT CRIMINALS, and it was probably some gangsters from LAKEWOOD just like that shooting at the club downtown". Come on, people. This has nothing to do with leftists, or black people, or whoever else you don't like having in our town. This has to do with the young adult party scene, and it happens everywhere. It is irresponsible to try to peg this incident on anyone except the INDIVIDUALS involved- whether they are black, white, frat boy, greener, soldier, redneck or leftist. Doing so makes you appear not very intelligent.

I remember the riots on Greek Row at UW in 2003. I was living in Seattle at the time, and I remember the quote in the paper from some frat boy saying "I don't think most of them were students. These people did not seem like they were enrolled in college."

All I could think was that if this event had happened in the neighborhood I was living in at the time, which was 85% black, the police response would probably have been a lot more aggressive, and the subsequent politicizing and racializing of the incident would have been absolutely explicit. But no one made a case for that this was a problem of mainstream white boys with too-much-money-for-their-own-good (though that case would probably have carried more weight than the former). Instead, everyone agreed that things got out of hand, that it probably was not because of UW, and that drinking was a factor, case closed.

My eyeballs are starting to hurt from all the rolling, so can we all just please admit the following:

1.)College riots are not caused by anti-war activists or black people from Lakewood or rap music. They are caused by people drinking too much and getting rowdy.

2.)It probably was mostly Evergreen students.

3.) This is probably not because greeners are more predisposed to this kind of thing than other people, or because they get extra credit for it, or whatever. (See #1.) It is because it happened on Evergreen campus, a place which is frequented by mostly greeners. But also, who cares?