Editorial: Maybe rioting wasn’t such a great idea, after all

It’s been a few days since the riots now, and as the pictures gradually show up on Facebook and… It’s been a few days since the riots now, and as the pictures gradually show up on Facebook and the bus shelters get rebuilt, we think it’s time that someone around here takes responsibility and apologizes. So here goes nothing … All right, so maybe we got a little too excited Sunday night. Maybe some of us had a bit too much to drink and didn’t really think about what we were doing. In hindsight, some of the things that happened probably weren’t the best idea. But we had a reputation to uphold, damn it. We’re the same students who stormed the Cathedral when Barack Obama won the presidency and shut down Forbes Avenue when the Phillies won the World Series. So why would Sunday night be any different? The difference, of course, is that things got out of hand this time around. Ever since the Steelers’ AFC Championship win, a post-Super Bowl celebration was more of a sure thing than the actual result of the game. Not that we didn’t totally know they were going to win. Because we so did. But even if they lost, a collective drowning of sorrows was pretty much a consensus plan for everyone within sprinting distance of Forbes Avenue, as was the collective destruction of it. Which is exactly where we went wrong. Everyone heard the crazy stories about the 2006 riots ‘mdash; some of us were even there ‘mdash; but instead of the spontaneous destruction caused by our predecessors, the actions of this year’s mob were clearly premeditated and thus more intense. The destruction, really, had nothing to do with the Super Bowl. Some of us found an excuse to go crazy and thought we wouldn’t get caught. We were wrong. The police may have only caught a few of us, but the whole city saw all of us. Our behavior got pretty rowdy, to the point where others were endangered. If Pitt officials see it necessary to punish people for violating the Code of Conduct, they’re right. Many of us did violate it, after all. But it wasn’t meant to be a snub to the school or to the city. We thought it was just a celebration that got out of control. We can’t take back what happened Sunday night, but we can apologize for not only making fools out of ourselves, but out of our school and our community. The fact is that the vast majority of us love Pittsburgh like no place else, and we were only trying to express our happiness and energy to the rest of world. It’s a shame it went wrong. We’ll do things the right way when the Steelers repeat next year.