A Sensible Approach to Dealing with College Students

I watched with shock and disgust footage on this evening's Sportscenter of East Carolina University campus police brutalizing students who were storming the field following the ECU upset victory over West Virginia.



Especially sick here is the footage of the officers beating the ever-loving crap out of some student who appears to be on the ground, already surrounded by three or four officers.



Amateur video shot of officers cuffing kids and physically restraining them.



An officer who instead of taking the more passive approach and standing menacingly behind Skip Holtz to protect Holtz while Holtz is giving an interview stating how happy he is that the ECU students are on the field celebrating, opts to, well, bravely throttle some kids.

I have a feeling that this issue resonates especially close to home for Brien, Russell, J-Red and I. One of the ways the four of us got to know each other really well at The University of Maryland was because of our insane fandom for Maryland sports, leading us to frequent the very front row of the student section at Terp football and basketball games.

At one game, I believe early in the season in 2002, the Terps pulled out a very unlikely victory back before we knew we were good. That season, for those of you who don't recall, was the season that the Terps went on to win the ACC Championship. Following the unlikely victory, the students stormed the field. And much like the students in the videos above, many Maryland students who stormed the field that day got the absolute shit kicked out of them by "event staff." I use quotation marks because on that day, the "event staff" acted like nothing more than goons who happened to be wearing yellow slickers giving them field access and the right to use unbridled force against anybody who happened to come onto the field. There were students being body-slammed to the ground, students being swung around violently, and there were actually quite a few battered, bloodied, and injured Terp students. If memory serves, Brien may have been one of them.

Some commentators love to say that there is no place for rushing the field in the game of college football. Well, those commentators are totally out of touch with reality. The reality is this. When you're sitting in the very front row of a section that goes 52 rows deep, each section seating about 1,000 students, and all 1,000 students are pressing against the row in front of them readying to surge onto the field the second the QB takes that final knee, it HURTS to be in that front row bearing the weight and pressure of all the bodies behind you. And frankly and truthfully speaking, there is absolutely no way that you would actually survive if you didn't fall forward onto the field. If not, you're dead. Crushed. Suffocated. That's it. Don't believe me? You've never been there.

And unfortunately who are the first people who the event staff or campus police are going to grab when the field is stormed? Yup, you probably guessed it. It's those very first people onto the field - those from the very front rows who have no choice but to storm the field. I'll be honest and say that we probably wanted to storm the field anyway. But there was also no choice in the matter.

I am pleased with Scott Shelton, Chief of the ECU Police Department, who according to USA Today, has responded to the events as follows: "There is no denying what you saw on film is sickening in nature. You must treat people with dignity and respect. That is the attitude and demeanor our officers must have toward our fans." He has promised an investigation into all of the officers who were on the field that day, who apparently were made up of officers from multiple jurisdictions, not just ECU Campus Police.

I will applaud Maryland's efforts and approach to solving this issue. Now, if the students opt to charge the field at Byrd Stadium, event staff backs off and makes no effort to stop students from storming the field. However, event staff circle tightly around the goalposts and it's clearly understood by students, and event staff, that any student who ventures towards the goalpost does so at their own peril. Now, it's unlikely that Maryland students will have any reason to storm the field this year (I'll say it here to avoid the snide and inevitable comment). But the system works. Last year after the Boston College victory, me, my buddy Steve, and a lot of the young alumni in the Terrapin Club seating stormed the field along with the students. And it was a whole hell of a lot of fun. The players genuinely seemed to enjoy having the students out there. The students didn't get violent, didn't cause any problems, and knew their boundaries. Likewise, there was no observable problem in the interactions between students and event staff.

So bottom line is that for as disgusted as I am with the actions I saw police officers taking towards ECU students in those videos, especially because it hits so close to home, I am encouraged to hear that heads will likely roll and that policies at ECU will likely change. And to those who will inevitably say in the media that the students somehow deserved it for daring to storm the field - you're not only wrong, but you're stupid.