Clifton: Student energy misplaced in Penn State riots

In the wake of Joe Paterno's termination from Penn State last week, 4,000 students took to the streets pillaging, destroying public property and tipping over news trucks like cows on a farm.

Yes, it was a riot. What it wasn't was a valuable use of student voices.

I'm sure Penn State smelled like lots of teen — and young adult — spirit during the riots last week. But for a university, a place many regard as a center of progress, learning and critical thinking, Penn State displayed none.

An education at a college like Penn State or Northwestern has a $100,000 plus price tag. If thousands of well-educated students can organize a riot that required response from 100 police officers regarding a "sports-related" decision, those same students also have the power to riot on issues of greater concern — issues that will still need solutions years from now.

Because college students are learning to know better — and many of them already do — they should do better.

Their youthful energy could have been used to riot for an end to world hunger, which is a preventable issue that affects more people than you might think. It is the top health risk and kills more people each year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Tonight, one in seven will go to bed hungry — that's more than the populations of the United States, Canada and the European Union combined.

Instead, Penn State students chose to violently riot, throwing rocks at police and breaking numerous windows all in the name of Joe Paterno.

Students could also use their youthful energy to riot for equal access to clean water. Approximately 1 in 8 people — that's roughly 884 million — lack access to safe water supplies. Every 20 seconds a child dies from a water-related disease due to lack of access to proper sanitation supplies. While we use copious amounts of water to shower in dorms or to play around in during the summertime, someone living in a slum may only get 30 liters for all their daily needs — that's around a fifth of what the average bathtub can hold.

But, instead, we got a riot regarding how a coach's firing would affect a team's entire football season.

Students could use their youthful energy to riot for an end to human and sex trafficking. The United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking estimates that  2.5 million people are currently caught in the system. And even worse, the U.S. State Department estimates that nearly 5 times as many — that's 12.3 million adults and children — are "in forced labor, bonded labor and forced prostitution around the world."

Yet instead of hearing students riot for solutions and making calls to action, those students chose to riot about football. Relatively little thought was given to the children who allegedly endured molestation. The striking contrast is double the number of students joined in a peaceful candlelight vigil last Friday in honor of the victims, who should have been the focus of the rioters in the first place.

When you think about it this way, it makes you wonder how self-centered we can all get as college students and as people, obsessing about things that are relatively marginal. Paterno will still be able to live comfortably in a safe, well-stocked home — though many can't say the same.

Where is the rioting for those who endure forced servitude? For those who need a clean drink of water? For children forced into prostitution? For progress on world hunger?

Last I checked, we aren't seeing that kind of rioting on these issues.

Sure, Occupy Wall Street is going strong. But how many Northwestern students and other college students actually participate in it, let alone support its cause?

‘Cause, from the looks of it, college students these days just aren't the rioting kind. NU is no exception on the whole, though there are shining moments like demonstrations organized with the NU Living Wage Campaign and the community forums held around blackface and the Muhammad chalkings. And with those events, there were many students who stood by apathetically or opposed the efforts.  

And let's not start discussing the "brothel" law. While that initial assembly packed McCormick Auditorium, attendance at community meetings have gotten worse as time goes on.  

Perhaps the message that many college students at NU and in other places are sending is that we really just don't give a damn and would much rather riot on stupidity and spend our weekends engaging in all kinds of drunken debauchery.

After last week, that's just what many people may think we all are, though I know there are many good examples of students here that care and work for progress here and abroad.

If you're going to riot, Northwestern, make it count. Step out of your comfort zone and take action.

Derrick Clifton is a Communication senior.

He can be reached at derrick.b.clifton@u.northwestern.edu.

Editor's note: The headline of this column did not reflect was printed in the Nov. 14 paper. It has since been updated to reflect that headline, which more accurately describes what the column is about.