|
Celebrating win is fine, but not at the expense of safety  bout
12:30 a.m. Thursday morning, a 7-foot-tall bonfire burned brightly on Richwood
Avenue behind Dairy Mart.
The scene was particularly odd, considering only one police cruiser, with its lights flashing, and only one officer were on the scene. FULL EDITORIAL |
|
Chris Gregory
Guest Columnist
O
EVENING PARKING CHARGE! NO EVENING PARKING CHARGE! I hope that catches
your attention and at the same time makes you happy. The WVU parking office
has unveiled a new plan that is also up for comment until the end of the
semester. This plan is strikingly different from the old plan in several
ways.
FULL EDITORIAL
Joshua DeFelice
Staff Columnist
am a little confused, to say the least. I don’t know whether
I should be proud or disappointed of the behavior that occurred after Wednesday’s
defeat over Virginia Tech. I guess I will never really understand,
for I have never really had the burning (no pun intended) desire to set
anything on fire.
I must admit: I am not a sports guru. However, I understand the excitement and feel the energy that comes along with a great season. Likewise, there is nothing worse than an absence of team spirit. But when has team spirit crossed the line into an act to get attention? In a country of free expression and thousands of (legal) ways to party, show excitement, etc., why the desire to set things on fire?
I am not convinced that the majority of the student population is pyromaniacs. Likewise, deep down I am convinced that it is an effort to get attention -- to take the attention off those who actually deserve it -- the team. In a way, it is a good thing. It shows the enormous amount of team spirit that WVU fosters. On the other hand, students get a bad rap for these same events. By showing their lack of responsibility and no regard for safety, some students make the school look bad. In fact, it wasn’t the pleasant tea parties on Grant Avenue that forced the city to ban the block party.
Perhaps I am wrong. Maybe those supporters who started the fires did so in an effort to show their excitement and support for the team. But, in the end, it took away much-deserved attention from the team. Why not go to the Puskar Center in a mob and wait for the buses to pull in? Why not be there when they arrive to cheer them on, showing them support? Why create riots throughout the town, taking up media time that should be spent on the team’s accomplishments.
And the big one … the goalposts. Why the goalposts? Is public destruction a new fad … should I go out and burn a couch on the Mountainlair steps and steal the mast of the USS West Virginia from Oglebay Hall? What do these things prove? I know that if I were in Texas and watching the news, I would certainly mark down WVU as a school in which I would not allow my son or daughter to attend.
In the bigger picture, what will the bowl committees think when they see the destruction WVU students (in turn, their fans) create? Would you want fans that have a history of riotous behavior? Whether we like it or not, as students of WVU, we represent the school. When you go back home for the holidays, what you say about the school and the things you did here are all reflections of the school.
Many of you are not from West Virginia. Many of you are only here because it is cheaper than most schools and the education is better. Likewise, that means many of you don’t like Morgantown. But please, while you are here, act and treat this town as you would as if you had to stay here your whole life. Have fun, sure, but just be safe and don’t threaten safety. Well, I gotta go now … Oglebay wants its mast back.
Joshua DeFelice can be reached at:
DAPerspectives@mail.wvu.edu.
|
|
Feedback | Search
| Opinions | Arts & Entertainment | Sports | Classifieds|
| Campus Calendar | Comics | Horoscopes |
| Archives | Information |
All Rights Reserved.
