STATE COLLEGE, PaLate Wednesday night, at the Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center, Penn State Universitys Board of Trustees held a press conference. The situation deteriorated almost immediately.
After the Board announced that University President Graham Spanier and head coach Joe Paterno would be relieved of their respective duties, some students who had worked their way into the media assembly began shouting. They were not pleased.
Do you realize that right now students are rioting because of your decision? one screamed.
Board Vice Chairman John Surma thought about the question for a brief moment before responding: Considering Im here, he said, probably not.
It was a smug answer, but even so it couldnt have taken Surma long to regret the reply. Mere moments after the Board announced its decisionsboth were unanimous, Surma saidthousands of students spilled into the center of campus. Some met up at Old Main, a Penn State administration building and university landmark, before migrating over to Beaver Avenue near Pugh Street.
When I arrived, the intersection was choked with people and it was hard to move. Sirens wailed. Beaver was blocked off by police cars, and on either side of the street you could see people hanging out of windows and perched on top of parking garages, all of them desperate to get a good view.
Most of the crowd seemed content to gawk and mill about and not get too involved beyond reflexive pushing and shoving over personal space invasion. There were chants, lots of them.
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We Love Joe and We Want Joe and the ubiquitous We arePenn State.
Now and then, when one student remembered why everyone was there in the first place, they would repeat far-less flattering things about Jerry Sandusky. Those chants were generally much shorter.
If all of this was set in motion by Sanduskys alleged crimesif students initially took to the streets and occupied Paternos lawn in a show of support for the football coach and a show of disgust for what the former defensive coordinator is accused of doing to at least eight small children over 15 unthinkable yearsall of that seemed largely forgotten on Wednesday night. The riotand it wasnt much of one as those things gofelt more like a football rally or a frat party. The victims, if they were thought about at all, seemed to serve mainly as an excuse for many of the students to gather in one place and be college kids.
It was a sad and unfortunate thing to witness. What began as an investigation into heinous sex crimes had somehow been twisted and appropriated for the ignoble purposes of a low-rent flash mob.
Every so often someone would set off fireworks or climb a light pole and attempt to bring it down. I saw one crash onto Beaver Street and another almost plunge into a mass of people on College Avenue. Policemen in riot gear tried to disperse the crowd several times. It didnt work.
Instead, the rally or the riot or the protest or whatever you might call it continued. More than a few drunks stumbled past me; one of them had a vuvuzela and blew into it almost nonstop. Even worse, and stranger, one student was carrying a giant circular cut out of Mel Gibson dressed as William Wallace from Braveheart. I asked a few people if they knew why. They didnt, but they thought it was funny.
I overheard a girl standing next to me talking to a guy who appeared to be her boyfriend. She wanted him to overturn a car that was parked in the middle of the crowd. He declined. Later, over on College Avenue, the mob succeeded in flipping a TV truck. A great roar went up after that, and then students posed for pictures around and on top of the upended vehicle.
What little overt anger I encountered appeared reserved for the media. I watched a student in a knit cap, sweatshirt and mesh shorts follow a TV cameraman around and scream f--- the media. It didnt take long for the crowd to pick up on it. The more the mob chanted, the more the kid in the cap fed off the energy. At one point, he pushed his face as close to the camera as possible and yelled go home, no one wants you here. It was the only time I thought someone was in real dangeraside from the frequent stampedes.
Because the crowd was packed together, you couldnt see very far. At least four or five times, a giant knot of people suddenly untangled itself and sprinted in a random direction for no other reason than the man or woman next to them took off and looked panicked.
After the TV truck was overturned, a stampede started down College Avenue before emptying out onto a side street. As the runaway faction of the crowd slowed to a jog, I heard one guy turn to his buddy and say why are we running? His friend just shrugged.
If he had asked why they were there at all, I suspect the answer would have been the same.
E-mail John Gonzalez at jgonzalez@comcastsportsnet.com.