As the ashes settle in Morgantown, the backlash is in. The Mountaineers won an amazing game, and Morgantown went to hell in flames, at least for a few minutes.
s soon as Rasheed Marshall took a knee to end the game, fans immediately emerged from apartments, houses and bars ,and stormed the High Street and Grant Avenue areas.
Now that the fires are out and calm has been restored, students and faculty have had time to reflect and wonder what they would do if and when an event like last night was to happen again.
Stephanie Smith, 20-year-old secondary education major agreed with the way fans celebrated. 
“I think it’s really exciting that we won, and that everyone was getting into it,” she said. 
Smith also believes that the University will probably do all that they can to prevent a near riotous atmosphere from covering Morgantown again.
“I think it will happen again,” she said. “I think the University will do all they can to prevent it from happening again, but people will find a way around it. They always do.”
Senior Chris Beavers echoed Smith’s sentiments that the celebration was justified.
“I think it was called for, and it was all in good fun,” he said. “I don’t think it would happen again this year though because no one will probably be around for the Pitt game.
“I don’t think they should throw the kids they arrested out of school or anything,” Beavers added. “I think they should just have to clean up the mess or have to teach little kids how to read or something.”
Ned Pence of North Spruce Street said that he wished he had a musket to fire to celebrate the victory.
So far, University officials have condemned the vandalism and other forms of celebration from the students, and have taken the stance that students need to learn to become better winners.
This is the opinion of Tom Sloane, associate dean of student life. University officials will be following up with the students arrested for more serious crimes to see what, if any, punishment they would receive from the University. 
“We’re not prejudging anyone,” he said, “our expectations for conduct are the ones listed in the University handbook and that is what we expect to uphold.”
Sloane added that safety was the main concern of the University, as well as celebrating responsibly. 
“We haven’t had a lot of practice dealing with success like this lately,” Sloane said. “Hopefully we will have some more opportunities to practice being good winners, and we need to help the students do that.”
One thing that faculty and students agree on was the way city officials handled the situation.
Senior Jake Wegman believes that the police acted appropriately in controlling the mob atmosphere. 
“I think the police did the right thing,” Wegman said. “If they had gone in there blasting pepper spray instead of just hanging back and making sure no one got hurt, a lot of people would have just gotten pissed off.
“Things could have gotten ugly.”
Sloane agrees that the Morgantown police and fire departments acted appropriately in controlling the celebration. 
“I think that everyone involved acted appropriately in controlling the situation,” he said. “They took what potentially could have been a very dangerous situation and responded very, very well. I think they did a magnificent job.”
The Morgantown Police Department said that most of the arrests made were for minor offenses like public intoxication, disorderly conduct and underage consumption.
Sloane also said he felt excessive celebrations are not just a problem at WVU, but have been problems at schools like Penn State, Ohio State and Maryland among others. WVU is taking similar measures to those used by the other schools to control celebrations.

Justin Leonard can be reached at:
DANewsRoom@mail.wvu.edu.