MSU riots: Time for this tradition to end

[COMMENTARY] Like most colleges, Michigan State University has many traditions. Those of us who have spent our lives as proud members of the Spartan family can recount many of them: painting The Rock; guarding the Sparty statue against Wolverine vandals; the high kicking entrance of the marching band into Spartan Stadium. But MSU has another tradition, a very dangerous one that must come to an end: student riots.

That tradition goes back to at least the late 1980s, when I saw it firsthand while living at the corner of Grand River Avenue and Harrison Road. That was when Cedar Fest got started, when groups of drunk and unruly students first started to blow off steam by setting furniture on fire and even flipping over cop cars. Sadly, thousands of MSU students made themselves a part of that long and shameful tradition on Saturday night. And while I wasn’t there to see it myself this time, the results speak for themselves: 52 people arrested, police attacked and police cars damaged, and lives potentially ruined for the worst of the revelers.

This seems to happen every few years at MSU. The original Cedar Fest gatherings resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to property. In 1997, about 500 people got together and threw rocks and bottles at police cars. It’s often associated with sports, as in 1999 after the MSU men’s basketball team lost to Duke in the NCAA Final Four. The next year, when MSU won the NCAA championship, things were much calmer and the police far more prepared. I again witnessed things at firsthand. But in 2005, after a loss to North Carolina in the Final Four, yet another riot cost the university and the city of East Lansing some $200,000 in damages and the cost of additional police to control the situation.

Continued -

Unfortunately, some at MSU actually do seem to believe that this is a tradition they should be a part of. As Michigan Messenger reported earlier, a 21-year-old MSU student named Jeff Salaman told my colleague Todd Heywood, “I missed earlier tear gassings. I’m just here for the experience. It’s a rite of passage, I guess.” More than 35 others told Heywood the same thing, but most wouldn’t give their name. I think there’s a reason they wanted anonymity. I think they know, at least on some level of their consciousness, just how ridiculous that idea is.

By all accounts, the police acted with a great deal of restraint. Though there are some legitimate questions about new laws that allow police to charge even those watching a riot and not participating, the police on the scene appear to have handled the situation very well. As Michigan Messenger reported earlier, the local ACLU had observers on the ground and the president of the group, Carol Koening, praised the police: “For the most part, when we did our debriefing, most of my observers felt the police acted with an amazing amount of restraint considering the officers were hit with bottles, hands, etc. They seemed to use a lot of creative actions to prevent violence.”

The police were prepared for the situation and were content to allow the kids to drink and have fun as long as they didn’t start destroying property or committing violence. But as our reporter on the scene noted, when the police went into a crowd to arrest one troublemaker they were pushed back by a mob throwing rocks and bottles and cans of beer. At that point, what can they possibly do other than treat the situation as a riot and force the crowd to disperse? We know enough about the psychology of the mob to know that this sort of thing is extremely dangerous. People in large groups will tend to act far more stupidly than the individuals in that group would ever think of acting, and adding alcohol to the situation is like throwing rocket fuel on a fire.

Because of the long history of riots at MSU, local and state laws have made the punishments for taking part in them much more harsh. The law allows any student convicted of crimes during a riot to be expelled from school; it also allows them to be banned from any public educational institution for two years after that conviction. That may seem harsh, but in light of the history of such events I don’t think it’s out of line. Perhaps I’d feel differently if one of these melees was prompted by a righteous protest against a moral evil like apartheid or a rally against an unjustified war. But this is mayhem solely for mayhem’s sake and the only way to prevent it, I think, is to make the cost of that behavior high enough that it’s no longer worth it.

Michigan State University is one of the great academic institutions in this country. As Spartans we have many things to be proud of, but the continuing problem with alcohol-related thuggery is a constant source of shame. It’s time for this tradition to stop.