Assholery 101

This past weekend, Queen's University in Kingston--which likes to think of itself as a founding member of Canada's Ivy League--was witness to some bush-league behaviour on the part of some of its students.
A crowd estimated at between five and seven thousand, many of them intoxicated, went on a rampage, overturning and burning a car, throwing hundreds of beer bottles and taunting police with racial epithets. Thirty-five people were arrested. At least eighteen Criminal Code charges were laid, along with more than 200 liquor law violations. More charges are pending.
Queen's is co-operating with Kingston police, and says any students involved will be subject to its discipline policy.

Well, yahoo and all that.

The most Queen's can do with these people is the least that should be done: immediate expulsion upon conviction. (I'll be fair here: some schools actually write into their disciplinary policies that students so much as appearing to engage in criminal activity face removal.)
The police will do their job, and a very thorough job they do, but a judge will vanish most of the charges on the grounds that "boys will be boys" and that will be the end of it. If you can be arrested in downtown Toronto for shooting somebody and be home for dinner, how much weight do you think the judicial system will assign to this?

How much weight do you think the owner of the burned car will assign?

I'm very much of the eye-for-an-eye school of thought when it comes to hooliganism. I'd like to see Queen's round up all the cars belonging to the students involved for a mass burning. And never mind if it's Daddy's car. Try explaining that to your father. "Well, you see, Dad, I decided to, umm, burn a car..." Oh, yes, and they can whip some beer bottles at their former students' heads for good measure.

You can't even argue "root causes of violence" in this case: these students were all putatively middle class or higher...you pretty much have to be, to attend university in this country. These people--the ones who don't get expelled, and believe me, that'll be the majority of them, if not all of them--represent the future of Canada. Isn't that exciting?

Lest you think this is an isolated incident, let me tell you about the Ezra Street Riot.

It happened in Waterloo a little over ten years ago. On April 22, 1995, I was working the graveyard shift at 7-Eleven, three short blocks from Ezra Street. I worked a lot of nights at 7-Eleven, and thus got a frequent firsthand look at student (mis)behaviour.
On this particular night, an end-of-year bash, sanctioned by neither Wilfrid Laurier University nor its Students' Union, was in full swing. Over 1500 people were whooping it up to the point where I could hear them inside the store, nearly a kilometer away.

To be sure, most of these people were not students of either UW or WLU. Actually, one man wearing a McMaster jacket accosted me at 10:45, demanding to know where Ezra Street was.

At a little after eleven p.m., the police moved in. Clad in full riot gear, they swept people off the street. I'd estimate at least half of them ended up in my store. Which is where, predictably, the police presence wasn't...but that's another all-too-familiar story.
Two people were injured in the melee. One person sustained a fractured skull when she (she!) was hit with a chunk of concrete. Another student was hit with a Jeep as he tried to cross King Street. More than forty people were carted away in paddy wagons, twenty five kegs were confiscated, and more than $2000 in cash was seized.

Laurier's response to this was telling. No expulsions, just a few suspensions and some people put on probation. Four University of Waterloo students got off even easier: the associate provost (student affairs) said his approach will not be to impose punitive measures, but rather to use the Ezra party as a "learning experience."

A learning experience. Hey, parents, do you know what your children are learning at university?

The following year, Laurier held an official party inside its Athletic Centre, two days before the anniversary of the Ezra Street Riot. On the actual night--again, yours truly was behind his register--packs of students roved about, looking for action. Police were highly visible on every corner for blocks around. That was one of the few nights an officer deigned to check on me.

Doubtless every campus in the country has its own tale. I say again, these police-taunting, car-burning, bottle-chucking university students represent the future of our fair country. Meditate on that a while...and have a nice day.