Why, ask the earnest inquirers after
pat answers, do we have these
dreadful holiday riots the spring-vacation
troubles at Fort Lauderdale,
Fla., the riots in New England and
California last Labor Day, the Newport
Jazz Festival riots of recent years?
Why do masses of college students, high
school students, and other young people mas
querading as students converge on holiday
resorts? Why, once too many of them have
crowded together, do they drink, fight, destroy
property and, in short, riot?
Is it a sign of social decadence? Are we wit
nessing a breakdown in law and order? Are
these stampedes, as one psychiatrist has Bug-'
gested, evidence of youth's search for status?
No simple answer suffices. Probably as long
as university towns have existed, the conflict
between Town and Gown, between the sober
citizenry who have to work and the privileged
youth who have "nothing to do but study," has
intermittently broken into the open.
At best, the responsible authorities of the uni
versity and the community try to divert student
shenanigans into more acceptable channels or
they ruefully tolerate them; at worst, they com
bat them, turning simple gaiety into rioting.
In English-speaking countries, where all stu
dents are treated as minors without rights,
these high jinks usually are meaningless pranks.
On the European continent, in Latin America,
and in Asia, the conflict between students and
authority more often takes political forms. Stu
dents demonstrate for the Right or the Left,
protest against visiting politicians or the con
tinued presence of foreigners, demand the re
lease of political prisoners. A mass gathering
may overflow into a riot, and such a riot can be
a spark that ignites a larger fire.
Today's U.S. student riots are pranks run
wild, fanned by mass-media publicity and
the mobility of our population into activities
that involve not a few hundred but many thou
sands of students. In the past, each college
could think up its own troublemaking activities
each spring, and the fracas with the local police
or the fire department ended with a few fines,
a night in jail, at most a few expulsions.
But today any such activity is given national
attention and spreads like wildfire. If the trou
blemakers use something difficult to get like
the snowballs which Yale rioters threw at the
police their activities may not be copied.
But if the troublemakers provide an easy model
and if publicity provides a detailed description,
the new activity may spread with incredible
speed, as the panty-raid riots did.
If the troublemaking can be tied in with a
place (Fort Lauderdale) or a date (the spring
. .. xVX.V;''1''- V... ..
Bored vacationing students rioted in Fort Lauderdale,
Fla., in 1961. This year the community took construc
tive countermeasures with dances, games, and parties.
holidays; Labor Day), the ensuing activities are
all the easier to promote. The styles are old.
The scale, the nationwide participation, the
numbers of participants all these can be at
tributed directly to the magnifying effects of
our modern-day ability to communicate ideas
(good and bad) fast and far and also our abil
ity to hop in a car and "see what's going on."
As on all occasions of this kind, the trouble
is aggravated by some who pretend to disap
prove as well as by others the merchants and
the police whose duty it is to prevent trouble
by making adequate preparations for a crowd.
Some merchants close their shops and try to
offer constructive channels for youthful ener
gies; others, however, order extra truckloads of
beer. Sometimes the police disappear, giving
the excitable young a sense of false security.
At other times, the police arrive in such large
numbers and so well-armed that they appear to
be encouraging a dangerous game of cops and
robbers. Sometimes one side or the other miscon
strues the situation, and the result is bloodied
heads and filled jails.
But a riot can also be avoided. On a Midwest
campus the dean of women filled a wheelbarrow
with girls' panties, wheeled it into the center
of the campus, and called out: "Come and get
them!" At that moment, the fun evaporated.
There were no takers ; there was no riot.
ONE OTHER element enters into riots. This is
the desire to effect action immediately in
stead of working toward some goal. We see this
when idealists mass at state capitals or in Wash
ington to protest about something instead of
settling down soberly to win adherents. Philoso
pher Bertrand Russell forcing British authori
ties to send him to jail and the masses of moth
ers with baby carriages insistently parading
the streets in a "peace strike" are not unrelated
to the masses of students invading seaside re
sorts and the masses of younger teen-agers fol
lowing their example.
But overshadowing all factors, penetrating
everywhere is our tendency to popularize the
ridiculous, blowing up the size of what happens,
eagerly reporting what one part of the world
is doing and what the rest may be doing next.
As long as publicity, the forces of law and
order, the commercial interests who profit by
the sale of gas and beer and hot dogs, continue
to endorse student high jinks there will be more
riots and more serious ones.
But one sober, imaginative effort to prevent
them, to reduce the whole thing to ridicule and
put it in context, would be enough. Like the dean
of women with her wheelbarrow, one adequate,
extravagant, mocking answer would help deflate
the picture, and this particular form of rioting
would become history. Whatever the stripes on
the top of the socks, the kids who tried it would
no longer be reported as "swinging."
COVER:
"The Resurrection," by 15th-century Flem
ish artist Memling, is one of the treasures
of the Louvre Museum in Paris. Easter also
has profound meaning forauthorCatherine
Marshall. Read her inspiring story, p. i.
LEONARD S. DAVIDOW I'rcdrnt and l',,blr,
WALTER C DREYFUS I'lVr r'rr.idVnl
PATRICK E. O'ROURKE ,lcfiv rlunnjr Director
MORTON FRANK Director of PnblMicr Uriah
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