DePauw to hell, we’ve got the Bell.
I’ve gotten my obligatory school-spirit utterance out of the way. However, there were two events that sullied the festive mood both leading up to and surrounding Bell. The first was the unceremonious expelling of the “Bleed for the Bell” event from the fieldhouse by the football team. The second was the phalanx of Indianapolis Police Department and Crawfordsville Police Department officers “guarding” the field after the game.
The first event, perhaps, was not that big of a deal. However, it makes me wonder about the priorities of Wabash College. The football team needed to move inside. It was raining, and the sod seemed more important than a blood drive. Let me restate that: life-saving blood was less important than grass. Furthermore, the blood drive was forced into the Allen Center lobby. Not a good place for a lot of blood to be changing hands.
This is not first time that the football team has acted with arrogant impunity in requisitioning facilities.
While Wabash still trounced DePauw, a school whose students are not sanguine under the best conditions, this year’s “Bleed” had the lowest turnout in four. Did the needs of the football team trump the needs of the patients who will eventually receive that blood? Yes. Could more blood have saved more lives? Yes. I cannot believe even the most rabid fan of Wabash football would argue that the sod on either the practice field or Hollett Stadium is worth more than a single human life.
However, that is the message they sent. Blood drives are less important than Wabash football. Saving lives is less important than grass. Grass. Which grows everywhere these days.
The shame.
Equally worrying is the police presence at the Monon Bell game. The lines of police, facing the Wabash student section during the last minutes of the game presented a face of control. The Gentleman’s Rule was nowhere to be found as the police “tased” students and wielded paintball guns. Granted, in the euphoria of the moment, students broke down the double barricades and rushed the field. However, the police response was completely disproportionate.
I don’t think, though my math might be off, that any current student has seen a Bell taken at Wabash. My freshman year’s contest, the last home game, ended with DePauw taking the noisy trophy. It is, then, understandable that the students wanted to take the field and share the victory with the football team. The Sphinx Club and the football team, though, did not help things by goading the students into rushing the field. However, at first, anyway, there was little enthusiasm for that notion among the powers-that-be.
I am sure that all those shoes could and did hurt the field. Probably not as much as all those cleats and impacts, but what do I know? However, I am equally sure that all those dollars in the endowment and the general fund could correct such a problem. Wabash men know how to celebrate without rioting, and those who miss that simple point have no business at the College. Or any college.
In any event, a college that brags about having no “Keep off the grass” signs really shouldn’t send the same message with a cadre of jackbooted gendarmes. Somehow, and this is just me, I would prefer a crisp, but polite, sign to a burly chap with a can of Mace in his hand and a Glock on his hip. It seems a little more “quaint liberal-arts college” and a little less Kent State that way.
In the words of morally agreeable industrialist Jim Fisk, “Nothing is lost save honor.” (God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut.)
Whatever that’s worth.
Both of these events, to my mind, seem to indicate a lack of respect for students and student concerns. Moreover, it shows that the priorities of Wabash are – in some ways – out of joint. Concern about sexism, ideas about gender, conversation, the environment, and other issues are important; those, though, don’t seem to be the issues with which the College struggles. No, it seems that there is some disconnect within the community about things that do matter beyond some abstract sense.
Saving lives is more important than football. It is imperative the students have the trust of the administration. These statements shouldn’t be controversial, as no fact can be controversial. Only interpretations can cause problems. I am sure that some of your colleagues, or even you, dear reader, will disagree with me. “Patrick Smith is an arrogant, slattern malcontent,” you’ll say.
“Maybe, but that doesn’t make me wrong,” I’ll reply. And, as for my part, I’d rather be unpopular than not speak up about real problems confronting Wabash. No, feminism isn’t one of them.
What does it say about our college when Chris Creighton (or his lackeys) feels completely justified and, moreover, entitled to kick a blood drive out of the fieldhouse? What does it say about the student body when the administration has to call in what amount to riot police to govern post-game festivities? Wabash is making progress toward a gender-aware, environmentally aware, and (most important) communicative campus. If these issues hold us back, it will be a sin against this place’s unique vocation of educating young men to be good men.
O, my people, what have I done unto thee?