Envy for state school riots - Seriously Mock-Serious

I really like Johns Hopkins, but I've always felt that something was missing from my college experience. I used to think that maybe it was because we didn't have a D-1 football and basketball team, or maybe that there's no real bar scene where students can let off a little steam. But immediately after watching and reading about Maryland and Indiana's Final Four celebrations and frustrations, I knew what that empty feeling was in my heart.

As embarrassing as this is, I've never been tear gassed [Editor's note: I have!] or hit with pepper pellets and rubber bullets. I've never leapt thought a bonfire or thrown beer bottles at policemen. Heck, I've never even knocked over a U.S. Postal Service deposit box or broken a store window with a brick. And although I've been guilty of public intoxication, not once have I been arrested for criminal mischief or disorderly conduct. Needless to say, being charged with battery on a police officer is still on my "to do" list.

It's so sad that my only exposure to rioting has been through television. I don't even know what a burning car smells like, or how it feels to get hit on the head with a nightstick by a policeman in full riot gear.

What it really comes down to is that Hopkins life is boring. And I say it's about time we change all that. But when was the last time we had a good reason to riot? There was Bloomberg winning the office of the Mayor of New York, which no doubt elicited some rowdy behavior, and Shaggy's near-sellout concert was certainly worthy of our collective disdain. The shutdown of The Beach was before my time here at Hopkins, but if I were here I would have been throwing bottles at cars and flipping my car on the hill. What else was there. Well, the new Subway should be cause for excitement, and I for one am pretty pumped about the new Chemistry building.

Let's face it: there haven't been a lot of reasons to set fire to couches and tear down street signs lately. And unfortunately, when we win the lacrosse championship this year, most of us will already be back at home. It's a shame, too, because we all know how well crazed lacrosse fans throw bottles and harass people in uniform.

I'm starting to feel that my school is inadequate, that somehow we're not worthy of being riotous maniacs. Are we really less psychotic than those kids at big universities? I think we're just at a disadvantage because nothing has happened at Hopkins to merit an uninhibited uproar. What would be totally hard-core is if we just decided to riot for no reason at all. In fact, I'm confident that if Hopkins students spontaneously decided to wreak havoc upon the city of Baltimore, we would get all the press and fame that those Terps and Hoosiers fans garnered for their schools.

Let's show those College Park clowns and those Indiana hicks how to cause widespread destruction, Hopkins style. Forget all that rocking Jeep Wranglers back and forth stupidity and all that jumping through bonfire nonsense. I want to see carnage and mass chaos. I want to see blood. I want to see Charles Street littered with Hopkins lunatics knocking over parking meters and smashing in car windows. I want to see the BMA in flames and the Inner Harbor a smoldering heap of chain restaurant rubbish. I want to see bubbles in the fountain by the Mattin Center.

And I want to see Orgo books with the pages ripped out and TI-82s smashed into little bits. I want to see premeds working together to stick it to the man and Pike and SAE brothers in arms as they fight the institution. I want Grand Theft Auto 3; I want the S.W.A.T. team and helicopters and the National Guard. I don't want to fear the turtle, I want the world to fear Johnny Hop.

And after the smoke has cleared and we have fought the good fight, we can return to our mundane Hopkins lives and hang out at the MSE, daring to postpone that paper for one more night, putting off that project for another day and reveling in all that we have accomplished.