Wild Fire: Penn State – Think Before You Riot.
August 28, 2012
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When I caught wind of the students rioting at Penn State after Joe Paterno was fired, I knew many of them would soon come to regret their actions. A rebellious nature at times is indicative of youth. But as we saw at Penn State, sometimes the young tend to rebel for no other reason, than to feel what it’s like to be a rebel.
The problem is that on occasion people choose a cause to rally behind that has no logical reason for ever being fought for. Case in point, Joe Paterno’s firing. As we can now surmise, Penn State was more than justified in firing Paterno. Having knowledge that children were being abused, and doing virtually nothing to stop it, over shadows any professional achievement.
But there are times when logic fails to register with college students, some who crave those opportunities to protest an injustice like those who have preceded them on college campuses around the country. But when the Penn State protests turned riotous, it became symptomatic of the inherent problem that existed at Penn State to begin with.
That the bizarre worship and deification of a football coach and his program, somehow transcended the sense of decency and the promotion of higher learning that is supposed to be the top priority of any college or university.
There’s nothing wrong with identifying yourself with sports champions. But at the end of the day that’s all it is, sports. A form of entertainment and recreation. Real life should always take a greater precedence over the winning and losing of a game. The Penn State rioters lost their perspective on this, or maybe they never had perspective.
And looking at the aftermath of all that’s transpired since the riot occurred, I’m sure many of them do regret ever taking part in such actions at all. Because other than blowing off some serious steam, what did they really accomplish? As the cause that they thought they were justified in protesting, was never really worth fighting for in the first place.
About Maurice Barksdale
