On Saturday night, anyone on south campus could feel the tension – that pervasive uncertainty, looming like the warm, thick humidity before a hot summer rain.
There was a subtle sense that even with the overwhelming police presence, something might go down, someone might be just pissed or drunk or crazy enough to light the fuse. I could feel it on East 12th and Indianola avenues, from Chittenden all the way up 14th Avenue and Summit Street, and residually up to Oakland Avenue, where I went after the police cruisers began to outnumber the kids outside.
Most likely, that energy traveled much farther than I did.
The anticipation was so pronounced for so long – the south campus streets standing empty since early Friday afternoon – that the absence of action almost seemed more bizarre than what has become labeled riotous behavior, a weird and unfortunate transformation of what is “normal” on campus.
With so much potential for chaos and so little action, especially on Chittenden, the entire weekend belied the fury and madness of a year ago, when the street was a haze of tear gas, bottles thrown from party decks and a mass of people screaming and running around between apartment complexes.
For many, that absence – the lack of fire and destruction and the invocation of riot tactics – was almost a complete success. The Columbus and University Police seemed to have learned an interesting lesson on preventing a large-scale riot: control through over-compensation.
For the most part, the desire that tends to spark the chaos on Chittenden or 13th is still there, as latent and controlled as it was Saturday night. You could hear it in the voices of those people perched on balconies, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever threatened. At times, there was almost a sense of disappointment in the way the anti-climax was discussed, an unfortunate tone that implied the night wouldn’t be as fun without craziness and wild noise heard blocks away, without the mass sensational news coverage and police chases.
Which is both bizarre and unfortunate. But if Saturday night showed anything it was this: Policing is a decidedly temporary solution, as are all tactics that cure the symptoms rather than the causes of an underlying problem.
The police brigade of bike cops and cruisers along Summit on Friday and Chittenden on Saturday – successful or not – is a short-term solution to a problem that does not seem to be going anywhere. So, in many ways, that tension remains, however hidden for now. Though its temporary absence, evident in the somewhat unusual early morning calm, gave me time to question why this was the case.
There is anger here. But why?
Strolling by certain spots on campus – Bernie’s during happy hour, 13th between High and Indianola at midnight on a warm spring Friday – you can sense that wearing down hard: Kids hating their current classes, anxiously waiting for release and pleaure, a constant tension of wanting to move on, but fearing what lies beyond.
Thus, in some ways, Chittfest and the state of campus after a Michigan home game is not about alcohol, since the desire to binge drink and the desire to riot stem from the same things, rather than drinking begetting riotous behavior by itself.
The riots of Chittfest are about back-pedaling, about rejection, about excess of pleasure before pleasure is taken away from things that most of the people throwing bottles or escaping cops don’t even seem to be aware they are dreading so desperately.
Unfortunately, no one in charge seems to be aware either, concentrating on surveillance cameras and munincipal courts – things laughed at by many of those causing the riots, ones that are not helping the cause of the tension that is pervading this campus.
John Ross is a senior in comparative studies. He can be reached at [email protected].
