Historical reenactment

Seems those wacky kids at Kent State just never learn. Always stirring things up, making the authorities want to come in and shoot all the students. This time it was over the time honored principle of burning shit in a huge bonfire because the semester is over. Those kids with their ideals. It's so cute.

An end-of-year college block party spiraled out of control as police fired pellets and used pepper spray to break up hundreds of rioting students who sparked a string of street fires at Kent State University.

Video posted on the Internet shows students hurling furniture and street signs into the flames on Saturday night as a SWAT team in riot gear converged on the crowd. Kent police said the party grew violent after one reveler was arrested and students began pelting officers with bottles, bricks and rocks.

It was the first violent clash between Kent State students and police in years. In 1970, four Kent State students were killed by Ohio National Guard troops during a campus protest of the invasion of Cambodia.

Wait, I get it: those history buffs at Kent State decided to get a week head start on their planned reenactment of the 1970 shooting. Taking the place of student activists with a cause were student alcoholics with a desire to burn stuff. The burning furniture and street party stood in as metaphors or the burning rage protesters felt over Viet Nam/Cambodia and the two American political parties the protesters felt had betrayed them. The police stood in for the National Guard. In the vein of "improving on the original": rubber bullets stood in for real ones. Those parties involved say it was a tremendous change that allowed them to attain some of the accuracy without so much of that bloodshed and body count.

I must commend the authorities. They did seem to mishandle things this time, but it was a tremendous improvement over the last organized event at Kent that got "mishandled". As for the students: learn from your predecessors. No one parties in the open at Kent in late April/early May unless they want shot at by the cops or army. That's twice now, don't let the third time be the charm. You know, where the po-po finish you all off for good with dull machetes or something.