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[On Tuesday,
April 13, 2004, a Rutgers undergraduate named Christopher Swasey
wrote an op ed that appeared in The Daily Targum] In isolation, you might make any number of guesses about what had exhilarated Mr. Deutsch. Was it a great class on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics with an inspiring teacher? A lecture on Shakespeare that had allowed him to really understand All's Well That Ends Well? A lecture by David Foster Wallace on the writing he's done since Infinite Jest? A performance of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia in which Rutgers undergraduates showed near-professional talent as actors? A brilliant performance of Bach's "Cello Sonata No. 3" by two student instrumentalists? As it happens, Mr. Deutsch wasn't talking about any of those things. He was talking about being one of the Rutgers students who went into New York to watch a Rutgers team play at Madison Square Garden. They'd painted their faces, made signs to wave from the stands, and memorized chants to shout at the opposing team. Reports on boosters' Internet boards after the game made it clear the atmosphere was one of barely controlled hooliganism. One fan proudly announced, "Michigan fans were literally afraid to cheer. The atmosphere definitely had an edge to it, almost like an English soccer match. Last night was awesome." Another reported an incident in which "two RU fans got into at the end of the game," and in which "one RU guy through [sic] a beer at the other RU guy. He missed and wound up drenching a 12-year-old kid." At sports factory schools, this kind of hooliganism has become all too common. Talking about student riots at schools like Ohio State, West Virginia and the University of Connecticut - where students overturned cars, set fires and broke store windows to "celebrate" football and basketball victories - a University of Maryland official recently said, "It has to sink in with students at some kind of a voluntary level that they're fouling their own nest. If your dominant image of a university is that of a howling, obscene mob, then you're not going to be impressed." I'm not arguing that the behavior of Rutgers fans at MSG even began to approach the hooliganism of the thousands of students who turned out to set fires and overturn cars in Columbus, Ohio and Storrs, Conn. But I do want to argue that students who come to Rutgers with the notion this is what a "real university" is about are here for the wrong reasons. If they ever come to represent a dominant attitude on campus, Rutgers's stature as an old and distinguished university will be gone forever. To turn Rutgers into a West Virginia or Ohio State, in other words, all it takes is letting in more and more students like Mr. Deutsch. At that point, real students - the ones who come here with a genuine commitment to academic and intellectual values - will no longer even think of taking the time to apply. We're perilously close to that point right now. In a few more years, when undergraduates are painting their faces for games against the University of South Florida, the University of Louisville, and other opponents in the "new" Big East, and when the campus is swarming with students who share Mr. Deutsch's notion of a "real" university, Rutgers may well have reached the point of no return. To anyone who cares about Rutgers as a university, Adam Deutsch's comment was depressing enough. But Mr. Deutsch is, after all, only a first-year student. Next year, or the year after, he may take a class in the Nicomachean Ethics that changes his life or see one of his friends in a production of Hamlet that gives him a different idea of what a "real" university is all about. The Daily Targum, on the other hand - which is supposed to provide a more thoughtful perspective on the purpose of a real university - has no such excuse. After the MSG game, the Targum published an editorial ("Changing tides of U.," April 5) bubbling with optimism about the chance that Rutgers, like West Virginia and Ohio State and Uconn, might someday become a sports factory, filled with students who spend four years painting their faces and howling chants from the stands. On that day, the editorial said, "Rutgers will be a changed place - a place in which [sic] we will proudly be a part." It's true enough Rutgers will be a changed place, but this neglects an important fact. On that day, Rutgers will be a place from which the real students on campus have all transferred to other universities, and where the brightest New Jersey high school kids no longer bother to even apply. Copyright (c) The Daily Targum 4/13/2004 |
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Boosters Respond -- the "writer" Wasn't There!
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Thank God, The ACC took the wrong team . . . -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When the hated ACC decided to conspire with BC for them to leave The BIG EAST Conference and join with their pack of thieves, so that they can have a 12 team league and a championship game in football, they actually took the wrong team.
Now, UCONN, still a solid member of The BIG EAST Conference, has Championships in both Men's and Women's Basketball, with the Men beating the ACC's best to win the Championship. This bodes well for The BIG EAST Conference for years to come. Thank God the ACC was too stupid and too quick in their greed to stop and think about their moves. Had they chosen UCONN over BC, at least in the near term, I think that the ACC would have had an advantage. Now, they have helped us by giving us a real boost. It is The BIG EAST Conference that has a school as its member which holds the National Championship in both Men's and Women's Basketball! |
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Isn't there something sort of repulsive about a school where students' idea of college is howling obscenities and starting fights and starting fires and turning over cars? For an answer, click on the picture just below (the UConn student holding up the "BREAK SHIT" sign). It will give you an idea of what being "just like UConn" would entail for Rutgers --  |
Mustn't do that, now, must we? Go around talking about something one has absolutely no first-hand knowledge of? Mustn't go around condemning UConn on the basis of a bunch of pictures put up by their own campus police, right? Or Rutgers on the basis of first-hand accounts by "students" who were there throwing beer at each other, right? Got to actually be there, right? Throwing a little beer and puking a little bit and setting a car or two on fire one's own self, right? Or is that only if you're a member of Scarlet R or a drunken "student" or a boosters' board yobbo? Just thought we'd ask.
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fans
in the section in front of us started throwing punches at RU
fans w/2 mins left. Those scUM fans are classless & it was
nice to see that they came out bloody. Thankfully, most UM fans
are educayted and much classier, but those guys deserved their
beating for throwing punches 1st, especially when they were winning.
And yes you are right about the RU guy starting that other fight
b/c I was several rows in front of them.
Winning
is everything & losing sucks! Just win baby! Go RU!
For
reasons unknown, they chose BC over UCONN.
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