Unrighteous Riots

Unrighteous+Riots

University of Minnesota Gopher fans rioted twice in the past week. The first time was after the men’s hockey team’s semifinal win against the University of North Dakota Thursday night, scoring the game-winning goal with just .6 seconds left on the clock. The second time was after their 7-4 loss to Union College in the NCAA championship on Saturday.

Students poured into the streets of Dinkytown to start fires, overturn cars, climb street light poles, act dumb, and take selfies with riot police. Law enforcement responded with pepper spray, paint ball guns and handcuffs. Regardless, after the first riot in which 10 students were arrested, people treated the second riot practically as a scheduled event. A total of 19 students were arrested on Saturday. Though relatively tame compared to similar post-sporting event riots in 2003 at the U, the mayhem drew national attention to Minnesota. Overall, this makes us happy to be attending Hamline, where sports aren’t automatically woven into the fabric of our college experience, and the only riots are non-violent protests against discriminatory legislation.

It’s generally accepted that any Hamline athletic successes will be modest at best, and that our teams won’t draw national attention (unless we’re counting last year’s men’s basketball scandal). For this, we at The Oracle are thankful. Sure, it might be fun to go to a sporting event and feel like something really big hangs in the balance. And it might be cool if our extended family knew the names of our friends and peers from watching them play on TV. And hey, everybody loves the excitement of a good riot once in a while. But, really, all of that hype is what professional sports are for, not college.

Although hesitant, we’re going to endorse Hamline’s “value of a liberal arts education” mantra for once. Not only should kids not go to college primarily for sports, they shouldn’t have the opportunity to. There are probably some people who came to Hamline mainly to play sports. However, they knew they wouldn’t be getting any financial benefit from it since we’re a Division III school, and probably realized that it’s hard to concentrate entirely on sports here when you have to follow the Hamline plan. This can sometimes make it really tough to be a student athlete, and we truly commend those among us who play a sport while being a successful student.

Hopefully, every coach at Hamline drills their athletes with the message that academics come first. We highly doubt that happens at Big 10 schools like the U of M because academics truly don’t come first for athletes there. College is basically the new high school for our generation, in that a degree is required to secure a job in this market. If all you did in college is focus on sports, how can you expect to get the most out of your experience and use it in a future career?

This is all tied to other events in national news. Four Division I male athletes, three football players and one basketball player from four different universities are suing the NCAA, arguing that bans against universities limiting compensation to athletes in the form of tuition- related fees are unfair considering that the NCAA makes billions from video game licensing and broadcasting rights annually. The plaintiff says that athletes “earn billions of dollars in revenues each year through the hard work, sweat and sometimes broken bodies of top-tier college football and men’s basketball athletes.” In a separate lawsuit, the football players of Northwestern University of Chicago argue that they are employees of the university, should be granted the right to unionize and should receive compensation beyond scholarships. Studies show that Division I basketball players, for example, graduate at a rate 20 percent lower than non-athletes, so after generating more revenue for their univeristy than they are compensated for, some still aren’t even receiving a degree, and most have no chance to continue in professional sports.

The current Division I system for student athletes is unfair, and they should no longer be taken advantage of for billion dollar profits. At these big schools, the pressure to perform well is enormous, and their studies are often a last priority. However, the current university sports model will either have to be altered or evolve until a fair balance is found. If student-athletes start being paid salaries, we may as well create semi-professional leagues for them to participate instead, and transfer the athletic focus completely away from universities, making schools solely a place for academics. But change will not happen overnight or just through a lawsuit or two, so it will be years until we see a fully adapted system.

In some ways, college students are all alike no matter where they go to school: we’re stressed, drink too much, don’t get enough sleep, etc. But, at least at Hamline, we’re lucky that competitions with completely arbitrary value don’t result in riots, we have more activists than felons and that our studies are actually a top priority. It’s we who will change the world after college, not those who think it’s fun to drunkenly wreak havoc and destroy property because of an event that should be considered entertainment. It’s a shame that it’s those people who get the attention rather than the artists, undergraduate researchers, activists and student journalists who quietly do great work in our midst.