Editorial: Quiet riot

When Barack Obama won the presidency, Oakland partied. When the Steelers won the Super Bowl,… When Barack Obama won the presidency, Oakland partied. When the Steelers won the Super Bowl, Oakland partied. When the Penguins won the Stanley Cup, Oakland partied — just not as hard.

Remember the post-Super Bowl “celebration” that engulfed Oakland? Pitt students, especially those who participated in the rioting, will probably never forget.

While couch burning has long been a fashionable ritual, Pitt students couldn’t leave it to that. In the name of celebration, Pittsburghers wanted destruction, and that’s what we got — $40,000 worth of it.

The question still looms: Have Pitt students learned from their impertinent behavior? Maybe Pitt officials have raised the bar dictating how not to celebrate. Or, maybe students really did learn.

The Penguins’ recent Stanley Cup victory provides some insight. Pitt students, or at least the ones living in Oakland for the summer, flooded Forbes Avenue once again. But unlike its predecessor, this celebration proved, well, more of an actual celebration than a riot.

Forget the broken windows and razed bus stops. This gathering featured only jovial high-fives between pedestrians and motorists waving their arms from car windows. No sirens here, just mirthful chants of “Let’s go Pens!” Enthusiastic fans kept the celebration to the sidewalk. Traffic was slowed but not stopped.

While the police presence was felt, officers only issued one arrest (for igniting a chair) among the estimated 1,000 to 1,500 partiers in Oakland after the Stanley Cup. Among the 3,000 celebrators in the South Side, officers made 31 arrests. During the Super Bowl riots, Pitt police estimated 60 to 80 arrests in Oakland.

For Oakland, the Stanley Cup victory celebration established a new precedent … we hope. Believe it or not, Oakland can celebrate peacefully. But what if the Steelers notch another Super Bowl victory next year? Hopefully, the Pitt student body won’t relapse.

We can’t ignore how the majority of Pitt students weren’t here to join the crowd on Forbes. Were most Pitt students not home for the summer, perhaps the celebration would have escalated back into frenzy.

As an ensuing result of the post-Super Bowl mayhem, police made sure violators wouldn’t get away free. Dozens of students faced suspension after the University scanned security video recordings and even Facebook to catch perpetrators.

These fears still linger among Pitt students. We all realize that while it’s fun to go wild in the streets, it’s just not worth being suspended. And on top of that, the University’s campaign to subdue Pitt’s party mentality is still fresh in our minds, even though the University administration has taken down the persuading posters.

We can’t be sure how the Steelers, the Pens or the Panthers will fair next year, but it seems as if Pitt and the Pittsburgh area will never lose its fervor for their teams.

But in light of the media coverage surrounding the Super Bowl riots, Pitt students still have a stigma to overcome. Oakland saw a more orderly, behaved celebration after the Stanley Cup victory.

Yet overall, this was still a small-scale celebration. A fraction of the student body set a good example, and let’s hope the rest will follow it once the majority of Pitt’s student body returns in the fall. The 2009 Stanley Cup Penguins victory should serve as a microcosm for any future sports-induced partying.