VIOLENCE 101

When recalling their student years, aging Baby Boomers remember wild
times. The typical campus did not resemble a monastery. Booze always
has been a feature of collegiate life. Young people seldom have been
noted for their Aristotelian moderation. Youths of all ages tend to
overindulge.

"Ought we to be drunk every night?" asks the college-age Charles Ryder
in Brideshead Revisited.

"Yes," answers Sebastian Flyte. "I think we should."

Sebastian's fate was not a happy one. Yet while he was dissolute, he
was not a brute.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote Jazz Age stories whose characters often had
Ivy pedigrees - or had pretensions to the type. Alcohol played a
significant role in the dramas of individuals who lived just this side
of paradise. Fitzgerald himself died too soon of too much.

All of which is to say that Fraternity Row has seen its share of
excess. The Greeks are not alone. Adolescents typically engage in
behavior considered a rite of passage and downright dumb. For decades
alcohol served as the medication of choice. Then marijuana appeared,
followed by more merciless stuff. Alcohol and drugs pulverized many
lives. Yet while Haight-Ashbury, the East Village, and other
counterculture Babylons had dark sides, college life seldom suffered
from violence. Concerts and dances might end with vomiting (or worse)
and regret. Stabbings and gunshots did not often mar the festivities.
Altamont set a dubious precedent.

Although extreme, the bloodshed in Richmond following an evening of
tunes at Kings Dominion was not unique. This is not a so-called black
thing, either. An atmosphere of threat pervades parties attended by
scholars of all colors. Mayhem has broken out at social events
associated with young whites. Anything might happen at any time. It is
not uncommon for college sports championships to provoke not only pep
rallies but riots and arson, windows broken and taunts hurled at cops.
The leap from high jinks to crime is not progress.

Administrators say alcohol abuse has gone far beyond the imbibing of
yesteryear. Students are drinking more - and more frequently. If that
is true, then violence also appears to be tolerated or accepted to a
degree unimaginable decades ago. The overall coarsening of daily life
contributes to an emotional stunting that allows violence to flourish.
Where once reports of murder or maiming among collegians (or
hangers-on) would have been seen as shocking, they no longer surprise.
The situation lacks the nobility of tragedy, but is merely sordid instead.