… is sort of like being Oscar Pistorius’s defense lawyer over and over again. For years, Blaguszewski’s role as spokesperson for the University of Massachusetts Amherst has been to, uh, yes, acknowledge that some of the lads at the school are a mite violent. They riot; they throw beer cans at the police; they assault and batter with dangerous weapons; they pick spectacular fights.
And they have for years; vicious drunken rioting is a long tradition at the school, and things are getting worse. The latest riot – today’s riot – has so far produced 46 arrests.
And poor Ed Blaguszewski keeps getting wheeled out to say the school is appalled at these bad apples but most of the students are great and hey I’ll bet a bunch of the troublemakers aren’t even really U Mass students …
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UPDATE: There’s Got to Be a Morning After…
Collecting bottles and cans around the scene of the mayhem Saturday night, Amherst resident Raul Colon told the Gazette that the day’s events looked like “a revolution, like in the countries that have revolutions between the students and the government.”
And there’s this intriguing tidbit about what you pay for in Pennsylvania when your taxes pay for public universities:
Other colleges across the country have gone on high alert around St. Patrick’s Day to deal with alcohol-fueled students. At Penn State, the school paid licensed liquor establishments to stay closed this month during the unofficial drinking holiday known as State Patty’s Day for the second year in a row.
Your higher education taxes at work!
Well, at Penn State they’ve been paying for (cough) all manner of things for a couple of years now.
March 9th, 2014 at 1:10PM
About 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the arrests/alcohol overdoses each year at Penn State were kids from other schools. After 2011, the community cracked down, and the event has been pretty much dying a slow death since then. Students groups started a service event; ResLife limited visitors; Parking jacked up prices; The local and state copes increased their presencs and, the university used parking fees to close the bars for one day.