What we need here on campus are some real criminals. I'm not talking about your basic thieves and con artists. I mean heartless, violent men and women with little or no respect for human life. I think this could solve many of our problems. Consider the following situations:
Scenario one. A group of 10 drunken male college students is walking down Henry Street late at night. They meet a young woman walking the opposite way. They begin to verbally harass her and make it difficult for her to pass. They're confident in their number and patriarchal power.
But what's this? The woman in question is a Canadian spy posing as a college student. She pulls a standard issue Colt .45 from her Gucci handbag and proceeds to bust a Kappa Kappa cap in the knee of one of her harassers. Guess they're gonna think twice next time before demanding a female stranger show them her breasts.
Scenario two. A group of 10 drunken male college students is walking down a quiet residential street on the long walk home at bar time. They pass a nicely landscaped house. This particular house even has small ceramic gnomes.
The students proceed to place the gnomes in humorous erotic positions, breaking several and ruining a bed of geraniums. High fives are exchanged. One guy gets on his cell phone to tell a friend. But then, as they bask in the majesty of their vandalism, two 85-pound pit bulls leap from the darkness and tear them apart like pre-packaged hamburger.
Their owner, a transplant from rural Meat Camp, N.C., comes out and calls off the dogs, and the ripped and bloody drunkards crawl home and die of rabies.
Scenario three. A group of 10 drunken male college students is walking late at night near a house party on Spring Street. They confront a group of four males walking the opposite way.
They know the cops are unlikely to show up quickly enough to stop or even see the fight. And there are 10 of them-and four of the other guys-and several in the larger group are beefed up and well-schooled in college-town barfighting. Which means they know how to throw a few haymakers and wait for their friends to let loose with some cheap shots.
Lance from La Crosse, meet Sam from San Quentin. Each of the four men produces a shiv and slashes the button-down shirts and heavily scented skin of the 10 aggressors.
This solution is extreme, and it would create problems of its own. So don't rush out and buy a sawed-off shotgun. But answer me this. On a campus where each of the preceding situations-except for the hardened criminals I added to the mix-occurs every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, what consequences are the majority of the perpetrators suffering?
Not convinced there's a problem? Walk down State Street between midnight and two on a Saturday and observe the number of women who get felt up by passing male drunks.
Or walk around after bar time and watch to see which groups of men try to start fights. And with whom they try to start them.
Or the next time you're out with nine of your drunken male friends, ask yourself the following questions. Do we act this way? And would we be tough enough to do it if the balance of power were less certain?
chunkkicke@yahoo.com.
