Something happened this weekend that got me thinking as to why I should write this commentary about the culture of Northeastern University. While walking home from Mission Hill over the weekend, we noticed a large group consisting mostly of guys. They were yelling, pushing and shoving, and kicking at cars and a moving taxicab. As we walked down the hill to get back to Huntington, the group came up to our group of friends and started yelling and cursing us out for no reason at all. Then suddenly, one of their ranks yells, “Do you know who I am? I’m the captain of the (sport name omitted) team at Wentworth!”
At that, he took a swing and landed a punch on one of the friends I was walking with. The 10 or so of us were shocked for a second but, then immediately pulled the (what we thought was) drunken individual away from our group. Then more people started pushing and taking swings at us. A group of about five guys and five girls swearing, making sexual references towards the girls and trying to get us into a full fledged fight with them.
A friend who was on the street that night informed me that the group was rolling on Ecstasy that evening.
I ripped one 6-foot-5-inch guy off of my roommate and then had to be restrained myself in all honesty; not because we were attacked by this random group, not because we were just trying to get home, not even because someone took a swing and a miss at me, because I was ANGRY.
These kids didn’t go to our school and all they were doing was contributing to the reputation and stereotype I have as a Northeastern University student. That reputation, which I view as unfounded, gave rise to frustration and anger as we pulled each other away from the crowd that evening and returned to campus. And I guarantee when the police rolled up on Wait Street, lights and siren blaring, they weren’t looking for drugged-up Wentworth guys; they were looking for Northeastern students.
So I started thinking.
The bigger of the two major Patriots’ riots, as far as I am concerned, was in Kenmore Square, Boston University territory. It just so happened that a non-NU student drove drunk and killed a non-NU student on Symphony Road that night. So we came under fire. We’re the bad kids. We drink. Then I read this week that students at Tufts were protesting against a program that you could say is a miniature version of our “Sex Week.” I say again, students were protesting against what they called “accepting that this kind of behavior was OK.”
Maybe we are the bad kids; we don’t attack girls. Maybe we are the bad kids, we embrace multiculturalism and sexuality. Maybe we are the bad kids, but I say that Northeastern is a young school full of rugged individualism and entrenched the most intelligent students in the city. We’re stacked with Red Sox fans and a small vocal minority of you Yankee fans which makes for an interesting mix in October. There were riots at Northeastern as there were all over Boston when the Patriots won the Super Bowl. Some girls showed their breasts, lots of people had been drinking and some of them did take it too far.
But, aside from the soon-to-be-well-punished minority, what did we really do wrong? Alcohol and shirt lifting. “Tsk tsk, that’s not the typical behavior of a Harvard student or Boston College undergrad.”
Oh wait, yes it is.
So the city council says we’re the bad kids. Let’s all march into the quad humming the theme from “Cops” and accept the fact that we won’t have a Springfest this year. But I’m not going to do that, and I don’t think any of you are ready to accept our label either. Write to the Boston City Council and tell them who we are. We are a great community. We are a great school. We are Northeastern, damnit. Stop stereotyping us.
— John Guilfoil is a sophomore criminal justice major and a Student Government Association Senator.
