Kegger Country

Tue., May 5, 1998

By John Webster johnwe@spokesman.com (509) 459-5421

Who was most embarrassed by Sunday’s drunken riot at Washington State University?

It wasn’t the parents who pay the tuition or the taxpayers who subsidize the school. It wasn’t the WSU officials who tried to minimize an incident that injured 23 police officers and prompted the governor to summon the National Guard. It wasn’t those of us who in the past have taken pride in our WSU diplomas. Certainly it wasn’t the rioters, who delude themselves into thinking that campus boozing is a cause noble enough to risk a felony conviction.

No, the persons most embarrassed had to be the rioters’ classmates. Particularly, the graduating seniors. They are about to leave the regrettably sheltered campus environment and face prospective employers, who now may look with extra care at the record of Wazzu frat boys.

Most of the rioters’ classmates have earned the respect customarily accorded a WSU degree.

However, rhetoric, committee meetings and/or revision of Pullman drinking policies cannot adequately restore the university’s damaged reputation, and place responsibility where it belongs. There is only one way to make clear that drunken mobs do not represent the WSU norm: Expel the offenders from the university and prosecute them on the appropriate criminal charges.

Then, it will be up to the rioters’ classmates to establish, with their own actions, a campus culture that marginalizes alcohol abuse and celebrates better uses for the energies and ideals of youth.

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