Rioting For Fun and Profit

All you riot fans out there will want to circle November 1st as the next chance a full blown, dumpster burning, car tipping, melee here in the North Star State. The University of Minnesota will be taking on Indiana in football and it's homecoming weekend for the Gophers. Rumors have it that a number of outside agitators will be in town (oh say from Folsom, CA for example) and that combined with the desire of students at the U to regain their reputation as the wildest rioters in the state, a claim recently brought into question by last weekend's riots at Mankato State:

Also, for some people it appeared to be a matter of pride to out-riot the April disruption at the University of Minnesota after the Gophers won the national hockey championship. The Mankato riot was "a copycat" for some, Peterson said. "It was them saying, 'Let's us do it and get our school on the map.' ,

sSould make for a combustible combination.

It also leads me to wonder what happened at St. Cloud State. I can recall back in '88, when I was attending the University of North Dakota, that SCSU students rioted for two days straight after police attempted to break up large parties. Have your students gotten soft? It's one thing to be outshone by the Gophers (you should be used to that in hockey) but letting the Mavericks grab the spotlight from you? Where's the school pride? Is everyone too busy attending diversity training and cultural sensitivity classes? What say you King?

All kidding aside I do feel a little guilty heaping abuse on the students at the heart of the recent riots. Yes what they're doing is stupid and destructive. It should not be tolerated and those that are found guilty of actively participating should be punished. The thing is that I know that if I had been in a similar situation when I was in college I probably would been right in the middle of the action. Why?

A. I would have been drunk

B. I (and my friends) had a proclivity for doing things that could be charitably described as absolutely moronic after having reached the advanced stages of inebriation. The rationalization, "Well, it sounded like a good idea at the time", was often heard the day after such ill advised activities. Someday I will relate the tale of the Ronald McDonald caper, which is a perfect example of such behavior from my university days. For now let's just say that a weekend road trip to Winnipeg ended up costing us a lot more than we expected. A lot more.

In fact there was one experience in my college days that was very close to riotous, and my behavior during it reinforces my opinion that I would have been one of the worst of the idiots.

It was a Friday night in Grand Forks and it was snowing. Which narrows the time of year down to a eight month window between October and May. I recall that it was warm but not too warm. The snow was sticky but not wet. It was a perfect storm for making snowballs.

A few friends and I were gathered in a dorm room drinking Windsor and Kool Aid. Not exactly a sophisticated cocktail but the best we could improvise given our meager resources. We lived in a four story dormitory, and the name perfectly reflected North Dakota sensibility, West Hall. There were two wings per floor, each of which shared a common area. The wings that divided the building also separated us into distinct groups. We often participated in sporting competitions against other wings (some authorized by the school some, like floor hockey on the wing, not) and rivalries had developed.

On this particular evening one of our wing mates burst into our room and announced that the rest of the wing was engaged in a snowball fight outside against another wing and our assistance was requested. We answered the bell and, after throwing on tuuks and gloves, we threw down with our comrades.

With our help the wing was able to make work of our rivals in short order. We were magnanimous in victory and the generous terms we offered convinced our former enemies to become our allies. Our combined forces then sought out other groups from our building who were outside and quickly dispatched them as well. We soon had a fairly large united force representing West Hall.

Today West Hall, tomorrow the World! Or at least the next dorm over. We surrounded the adjacent dormitory and called out its residents with a barrage of snowballs against the building. When they emerged and offered resistance we used our overwhelming firepower and experience to subdue them. Once defeated they too elected to come over to our side. Everybody likes a winner I guess.

This little exercise was repeated with the other two dormitories that made up our "quad" and our ranks were swollen with fresh troopers. We had conquered all before us. What was next?

Our attentions turned to the East, as has so often happened with those flush with victory in the past. We would traverse the small stream that ran through the campus. There would be no turning back now. It was all or nothing. We would cross the English Coulee.

From our initial appearance on the scene, my friends and I had assumed leadership roles in the throng but it wasn't until we were on the bridge that we realized the size of our following. Granted I had probably had a few too many Windsor-Kool Aids at that point and my memory is a bit hazy, but there must have been at least two hundred people in what was increasingly becoming a mob. It was both a bit frightening and exhilarating to be at the head of this unruly contingent. There is a certain power in crowds like this that you can almost physically feel. We felt that power.

Once across the Coulee we challenged, defeated, and then recruited students from another dorm. We were beginning to feel invincible at that point and were looking for new enemies. Suddenly a cry went up from the crowd, "Lets get the frats!". Capital idea that. At least it seemed so at the time. The mob now had a mission and we marched down University Avenue until we reached the houses on Fraternity Row.

The first frat house that fell under our assault offered little resistance and those few fraternity brothers who ventured outside were quickly forced to withdraw under a hail of snowballs. The neighboring house was dispatched in a similar manner. Then we struck gold with our next target.

Apparently the house was hosting some sort of formal affair, for it was full of members decked out in suits. As they spilled outside in their formal attire to defend the honor of their frat, they were cut down like chafe by a withering stream of compacted snow projectiles. It was a turkey shoot and the frat boys were none to happy to be the ones getting plucked.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), this proved to be the apex of the mob's power and it was the turning point of the evening. It wasn't the beginning of the end, but it was the end of the beginning. A few strong armed marksman in the group had found the range of the house's windows and were firing for effect. The effect was that they breaking. The fun and games were threatening to spin out of control. That's when we heard the sirens.

This is where the critical mass could have been reached and we would have been in riot country. Had the majority of the crowd stayed to confront the police, it could have been ugly. But our coalition went wobbly at this point as many dispersed to seek safer pursuits. Some of us hard core, dead enders refused to melt away quietly and decided that we would instead regroup and march north to do battle with yet another fraternity house. Along the way our ranks were further thinned as stragglers dropped off like sunshine patriots going home when the going got tough. By the time we reached our next battlefield we were probably down to only a quarter of our size at the height of our strength. But we would continue the fight. We knew nothing else.

The frat house we had chosen to attack happened to be having a party and so we were met with heavy resistance. Soon a pitched battle unfolded that seesawed back and forth across the snowy streets and yards. Then the police arrived. Six squads cars screamed onto the scene, scattering us like light infantryman sent reeling by a charge of the dragoons. It was every man for himself and we headed for the hills. Well, not the hills really. We were in North Dakota after all. But we did seek unconventional avenues of escape, knowing that the streets would be crawling with Grand Fork's finest.

Somehow I ended up with one of my friends and we pathetically slogged our way through snow drifts looking not unlike the Grand Armee retreating from Moscow. Soon we were crossing over the same English Coulee that had demarcated our earlier triumphs. This time there was two instead of two hundred. And we weren't on a bridge but on the barely frozen ice of the stream. Barely frozen enough so that we each fell through a number of times before reaching the other side.

We stumbled back to our dorm rooms. Wet, cold, and tired. It had been a wild ride but now the evening's battles were over and we had managed to elude the long arm of the law. We mixed up a couple of Windsor-Kool Aids and celebrated our success.