Honestly folks, when will university students realize that just because there were student riots over Vietnam and the draft that it does not mean that going for a free-for-all with fires and vandalism over some terrific celebration — such as a football or basketball game, spring break or too many beer kegs and too many friends at a house party — is the same righteous thing?

I went to college at Colorado University and the University of Northern Colorado in the 1970s. One big difference is that riots evolved over young males under the age of 21 being drafted without the right to vote; young men without a voice in the politics of war were ordered into the military unceremoniously before their right to have a voice in their life future.

You were sent to war by the time you were 18, but you could not vote until you were actually considered a legal adult at 21, for those of you in the dark from a Veishea drinking binge.

In all honesty, you are not keeping up any type of human rights tradition other than being incredibly “babyish,” immature and amazingly ignorant in that you think that because your parents or financial aid pays for school that, “What the hell, it belongs to me.”

Just as long as you mark your territory with beer cans, fires in trash canisters, pissing in the bushes because you and your girlfriend are too drunk to get back to the dorms and a few ofÿthose same old stale repeats of “Hey, sweet! Cool! These are my rights, beats stepping on a land mine like some asshole soldier just because he was too stupid to stay out of Vietnam!”

Maybe you should ask some of those old-timer professors, faculty and staff about what they recall about the Vietnam War? I’ll even bet the president and administration has a pretty good memory — might be enlightening.

Seanne Prine

Evanston, Wy.