Opinion: Students react to the riot on the Hill
CU Boulder: A Haven to Many, Turned Space for White Privilege to Flourish
By Areyana Proctor and Abby Schirmacher
Last weekend, hundreds of University of Colorado, Boulder students woke up and chose to put their “college experience” over human lives. They gathered unmasked, destroyed property and terrorized law enforcement.
For absolutely no reason, other than to party.
The sheer privilege of white, wealthy college students who are more focused on partying than receiving an education was revealed in Boulder that day. To say the scene was horrific would be an understatement.
The city waits with bated breath this week expecting a COVID-19 outbreak, feeling embarrassed nonetheless. While a majority of the University’s community didn’t attend these riots, the entire establishment is facing the brunt of the actions of this group. Across the nation, Americans are checking off another day of staying cooped up inside their homes, these students cracked open a cold one–or several–and decided their frustration with this virus wouldn’t stop them anymore. The sun came out and their privilege seeped through.
Shame on them.
We are disgusted with the actions of these members of our very own community. The beloved place we call home is the laughing stock of the state and country, filled with hundreds of ignorant kids. At an age where they should be considered adults, they didn’t act like it.
Sure, the University hasn’t necessarily provided support for students to endure college life during a pandemic. The same tuition for virtual classes is frustrating in addition to constantly hearing “you can’t do this” or “don’t do that.” It would be nice to have more options when it comes to what students can do, and maybe some mental health services or compensation to go along with it. This pandemic is taking a toll on everyone’s mental state, after all.
But it’s our responsibility as CU students and residents of Boulder County to comply with necessary measures to curb the spread of the virus. It’s our duty. Yes, this year has been grueling and we’re all tired of this pandemic. We’re not just tired, we’re exhausted. Especially in the absence of a much needed spring break, not just to travel but to relieve ourselves of the stresses of coursework.
But that doesn’t give us any right to act like those students acted that day… to reiterate, for absolutely no reason at all.
But maybe there was a reason for these actions. And that’s the evident white privilege taking shape in this community. This riot revealed the freakishly obvious reality of Boulder, Colorado and quite frankly this country as a whole: we are surrounded by many selfish people. We live in an individualistic society, prioritizing one’s need over the needs of the whole, over their neighbors.
And at this point, it feels like there’s nothing we can do about it.
So many aspects of society now are functioning on the basis of individuals and their selfish intentions. Many are too selfish to wear masks, too selfish to understand that their actions are putting their friends and neighbors at risk, too selfish to care. The pandemic has become politicized; it has deeply divided us.
The riot exemplified the privilege of members at institutions like CU Boulder. Higher education specifically is filled with white students who are here on their parents’ dollar and don’t acknowledge the repercussions of their actions. It’s not their property or their lives at stake, after all. To them, it’s just a virus that they will get over in two weeks. It’s just a photo op for their latest Instagram post or a Snapchat story to let everyone know they’re cool enough to party.
None of this is new. The privilege of the students at CU Boulder has always been apparent; however, the actions of the group on the Hill is unlike anything most of us have ever seen before. It was purely embarrassing.
Some may have a hard time understanding the ways in which this debacle was a demonstration of white and wealthy privilege, or how this even connects to race to begin with.
Understanding this requires a deeper analysis of the systems in place that caused something like this to happen.
It is important to start with the fact that wealth disparities do indeed exist between racial groups, suggesting that we have actually not yet reached the non-racist utopia that many people dream of. According to The Federal Reserve, “the typical white family has eight times the wealth of the typical Black family and five times the wealth of the typical Hispanic family.”
From there, you are probably thinking there has to be a logical explanation behind this. There, in fact, is.
The Federal Reserve continues to tell us that this is a result of “many complex societal, governmental and individual factors that play out over the life cycle and even across generations.” This is something that can be identified with a phrase that we are sure many people have heard recently; systemic racism.
When conducting a simple Google search on this phrase and not digging any deeper into the mass amounts of research that exists on this topic, you would find that it is the racism that is embedded into a society or an organization through normative structures.
Any reasonable person knows that the amount of wealth you hold impacts your access to different resources in society. This, along with many other reasons, is a big reason why COVID-19 impacts people of color more than it impacts white people.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the COVID-19 death ratio in comparison to white, Non-Hispanic persons is 2.4x for Indigenous persons, 1x for Asian persons, 1.9x for Black persons, and 2.3x for Hispanic or Latino persons.
It would be ridiculous to assume that people of color are just more susceptible to disease, or that they are all collectively less capable of reaching the levels of wealth and security that white people in this country have. The research and the data very blatantly show us that inequities within our system do exist.
Now, let’s take all of that information and bring it into the context of the CU Boulder campus. The Fall 2020 Enrollment Profile shows us that 66.4% of the student population is white. This makes Boulder a primarily white institution. While it cannot be generalized that all people who identify as white are within a wealthy class bracket, we have already determined that white people hold disproportionately more wealth than people of color, and college itself is a big business institution that requires money to be a participant, whether that is through the form of money from parents or working, through loans (which require either you or your parents to have good credit, something that is not accessible to all people), or through scholarships (something that requires you to able to succeed in normative and hegemonic structures, something that may be difficult for a person who is on the autism spectrum, for example).
We can see from the pictures and videos posted from that day what a majority of the students who decided to attend this party look like. Looking at comments in the social media posts that people were gracious enough to create after doing extensive research on this topic, it is clear that many people are flabbergasted that we would have the audacity to say that this is the result of privilege. “Kids were just being kids”, some may say. While we cannot ignore that it was an irresponsible and financially-motivated decision to bring so many students back to campus, in the first place, amidst a pandemic and promise them a “normal experience,” these students still made this decision to attend this party.
The fact that events like this tend to garner less condemnation than others involving people of color is telling in and of itself. Why do people feel necessary to go to lengths to defend a riot that ensued after students wanted to party in a pandemic, while the protests that happened all throughout last summer in regards to police brutality and systemic racism were continuously demonized?
If you are not able to see the ways in which this was an extremely selfish demonstration of privilege, then you may need to examine your own privilege. It is also important to understand that terms like white privilege or privilege in general are not meant to attack anyone. It is a description of the ways in which your environment and socioeconomic conditions impact the barriers you may face in life and the outlook you may develop. A person can be privileged in terms of their class, age, height, IQ, disability, race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, citizenship status, level of education and so many more aspects of our identities.
The fact that so many young, white and wealthy adults felt the need to throw a huge party during a pandemic makes it evident that they don’t have to worry about passing a disease on to their families, friends or their neighbors who are those in communities, may not have health care, and are underrepresented in the healthcare system. This is a privilege. There is no other way to explain it.
Privilege is something that we all have in one way or another. However, it is important to use it in ways that help to improve the lives of others and benefit society; not in the way that was demonstrated on the night of Saturday, March 6.
Hopefully, continued vaccine rollout will attempt to curb this virus sooner than later. But the actions of members of this community will never be forgotten, even in a post-COVID-19 world. We urge the University to continue to support students through this difficult time but to also take action to hold those in attendance of the riot accountable. We appreciate the actions taken so far, but there is still work to be done to solidify the dangerousness of the selfish actions that day. The community is eager to assist in any way possible to make sure that happens.
To those who relieved their frustration by partying that day – do better. Don’t put our wonderful community that so many of us take pride in to shame like that again.
As a community, we must continue to do our part. We must wear masks, social distance and do what we can to prevent the spread of the virus. Not just for ourselves, but because it’s the right thing to do.
CU Boulder: A Chance to Change, Rather than to Blame
By Madeleine Kriech
There is no question that attending a massive party during a pandemic is not the right thing to do. People all over the world are dying everyday from the coronavirus and it takes the entire community to curve exposures. And a mass congregation of hundreds of college students is exactly the opposite of what Boulder needs to keep its infection rates down.
However, the Saturday, March 6 party leaves one giant question: Why did it take police over five to six hours to respond to students partying in the street?
Early footage of this party surfaced at around 2 p.m. Other personal accounts of students claim the party began as multiple house parties at 11 a.m. Party hosts continued to invite others, until the others invited more others and more others, causing the party to surge out of control and reach its estimated peak of 800 people. The Boulder Police Department (BPD) finally responded to the scene at 8 p.m.
Current Boulder public health requirements state that public gatherings are limited to a maximum of 10 people and those people can only be from a maximum of two households. If the March 6 party bloomed from multiple house parties beginning at 11 a.m., public health requirements were surely already broken. BPD could have, and should have, responded to the incident before it was out of control.
For the sake of argument, perhaps BPD was not aware of the party in the early afternoon. If they didn’t know about it then, they surely became aware of it at around 5 p.m. when complaints began, videos spread on social media, including from the account Barstool Colorado (@Barstoolbuffs), and reporting done by Daily Camera reporter, Mitchell Byars, surfaced. Once mainstream media confirmed the party’s existence, it still took three hours for law enforcement to respond.
It seems highly suspect that it really took BPD three hours to get a plan of action together, especially since the more time that passed, the less able BPD would be to control the party. It may lean on the side of conspiracy, but it appears BPD waited until total blame could rest on the students. Flipping a car, ripping down street signs, and inciting violence are never okay, but had police arrived in a timely manner, these things may never have happened.
In the aftermath of the party, students blaming students for their decisions seems to have become a trend, especially by putting the fault of the “block party” on Greek life. Some Greek life members were in attendance, but so were non-Greek affiliated students. It doesn’t do us any good to seek for an organization to blame. It’s notable that many Greek organizations, such as Phi Kappa Tau, recruited members to help clean up the street the day after the party. Rather than holding a grudge against all of Greek affiliates, direct your energy towards specific people that attended the party by seeking to educate them about how their decision puts others at risk.
As for continually spreading blame, it’s crucial that we don’t judge people so harshly about attending this party. Was deciding to go the right choice? No. However, I understand the motivations behind it. We are all experiencing a pandemic, an unprecedented event in our lifetimes for the first time. Everyone has to cope in their own way and that may be by pretending that a highly contagious virus doesn’t exist and making a stupid college-kid decision to attend a party. Maybe one of those students is in such a dark place from pandemic-related isolation that they felt they would hurt themselves if they didn’t act normal for a night. Maybe their loved-one just died from COVID-19 and they lost all hope that things were getting better so they just forgot all safety guidelines. We can never know exactly what’s going on in someone else’s head. Their “stupid college-kid decision” was maybe the only way they knew how to deal with this pandemic. And I get it. This pandemic has taken away a lot of things from all of us. I crave for a hint of normalcy.
As a resident advisor on campus, I see the daily struggles of being a college freshman during the COVID-19 pandemic. They are stuck in their tiny rooms all day, staring at Zoom hour after hour, until they go to bed and wake up to do it again. In the fall, I started out with 21 residents. Now I have 16, two of whom are new. I can only assume these seven residents moved out of the dorm because of how lonely it is to live in a dorm right now, especially the lack of resources the University has provided for first-years to seek for an outlet to be social and cope with the pressures of a new environment.
All of this is not to say partying is a justifiable decision, but I can understand why someone may have chosen to attend (however, destruction of property and violence are never okay). My hope is that each attendee gets a COVID-19 monitoring test on campus and stays home if they are positive. I ask that we show some empathy for our neighbors and see if they are doing okay rather than jumping their guts on their decision to go to a party.
Rather, inquire about the motivations behind the party, we need to learn how to use opportunities like this to educate others. Make sure your peers are in a safe space mentally. Remind your peers to get a COVID-19 monitoring test done. We are all human. It’s foolish to think you’re not going to make big mistakes in your life, and hopefully going to that party was one of their big mistakes. But let’s use our frustration at the party to get better mental health services on campus, to find out the real reason it took police hours to respond, to push CU Boulder to change their COVID-19 protocols to keep our community safe.
The party, turned riot, on March 6 is disappointing and does not reflect the motivations of the entire student body at CU Boulder. Rather than ostracizing an entire group of students, we should use this time to heal divisions on our campus and educate others on the severity of the virus. Instead of canceling fellow Buffs, find ways to educate and help them. It will make us all better people.
