The Riot.

Last Tuesday I saw a riot. You know, there was no blood (well, a little) or burn victims or anything, it was just a situation that got out of control. But I think that’s good sometimes.

The riot, which was between my Augustana College and our rival the University of Sioux Falls (USF), lasted only for a short time before the authorities arrived who were then followed by a fire truck to put out a dumpster fire. I don’t know why such a rivalry exists between the two schools, but for whatever reason, it just got violent.

In my opinion, it was your basic feel-good kind of thing. Nobody got seriously hurt. It was a way to leak a little testosterone in lieu of bad sex I suppose. No guns, no knives. Just a couple of fistfights, some artillery shells, a box full of Black Cat fireworks, some curdled milk, and the entire egg inventory of the local Hy-Vee. But I think, like most things, this whole mess could be seen coming from a ways out.

More than anything, it is that time of year for college students where there are knives at their throats in every direction. Professors, realizing finals are coming up no sooner than the students, make that push to get one more grade in before finals and Thanksgiving break. Many students, myself included, respond to this sudden shock of assignment load similarly: We tune out.

It’s that psycho numbness that creeps into your head and pinches your brain stem until winter break. Get up too early, go to class, go to work, go back to class, go back to work, get the most important homework done first and wing the rest and then sleep. Repeat this process. To endure, sometimes it’s easy to just let it go. Turn off the noise. Your body teeters constantly on the verge of physical and mental collapse, typing line after line of mediocre work onto a page until you crash completely, facedown on your keyboard until you wake up the next morning with 340,000 letter j’s gracing the last 122 pages of your English paper.

As wild and glamorized as college life is made out to be, it is almost as drab as the moments just before a midlife crisis. The rut digs deeper with every buzz of the alarm clock early in the morning and college students across the nation wear the stain of midnight oil on the dark circles under their eyes from many sleepless nights cramming for tests and finishing papers. Soon enough though, a man is liable to snap.

For these reasons, I can’t blame the rioters on either side. I think all parties involved woke suddenly from this zombie-state and realized their own youth was slipping away from them. What had they done with their lives besides keeping their noses in a textbook they would be paying heavy debt on later in life? What had learned besides flawless beer pong technique or screaming chants at football games? Besides learning how to pull a decent prank? How to seduce a freshman? They look, actively search for any chance they can get to break the routine.

So when your rival comes over to your college trying to graffiti your mascot, what are you going to do? For the first time in many of these students lives they did something to break their self-sculptured mold, and threw a punch and some punk from the other side of 26^th Street who dared to desecrate the Augustana Viking.

Education—real education—isn’t just about how many times you’ve cracked a book, but also how many times you’ve had your back to the wall. Those boys who sauntered out and rumbled with those USF thugs who dared tread on our turf did us all a favor. They broke their gaze from their books and fought the good fight. They acted immaturely only for the sake of a good story. But more importantly, they reminded us there’s something beautiful about burning the candle on both ends.