The birds are chirping, the trees are budding — spring is in the air. It must be time for a riot.

Hundreds of easily excitable students “gathered” for a springtime party Thursday at Towers. The celebration grew and spread to as many as 1,500. Administrators played down the gathering.

“This was a group of students getting together, enjoying a spring evening,” said Thomas Hill, vice president for student affairs, about the crowd that burned their clothes in front of the Campanile.

Officers and administrators estimated the crowd at 300, and they objected to the use of “riot” in the headline of Friday’s newspaper, saying the gathering was merely a boisterous crowd.

According to eyewitnesses there were over 1,000 students involved. And although it may not have been a riot in the L.A.-riots sense, it definitely involved “disorderly behavior” and “disturbance of the public peace,” which, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, constitutes a riot.

But the night of rioting did have significance, despite what administrators said.

Immediately after picking up other students at all three residence associations, the rioters traveled to the lawn of ISU President Martin Jischke. This, according to administrators, didn’t really mean anything. It was simply a stop on the way for a bunch of ambling kids.

“It’s like Mardi Gras,” Hill said. “And that was a designated stop on the parade route.”

Although it wasn’t planned, the mob went to Jischke’s lawn for a reason. Maybe it wasn’t to make any actual demands or to protest anything in particular, but there was something spurring that crowd other than the Knoll being on the way to frat row.

If it wasn’t alcohol-free Veishea motivating the mob, what was it? Besides the Knoll, the other definitive stop on the mass’s meandering path was Jack Trice Stadium, where about 20 students broke in and were then locked in.

Whenever students try to storm the stadium field to take down the goalposts, they are met by administrators and law enforcement officials, who communicate to them that the money it takes to keep the stadium grass green is more important than the school spirit facilitated by taking down the goalposts.

I wondered what would happen if the distinguished alumni of this school would get out of their recliners in the skyboxes and their seats at the 50-yard line and rush the field.

Do you suppose they would be met by tear gas and handcuffs and the disapproving look of Dr. Jischke? I doubt it.

Maybe ISU is no different than any other school. But the attitude here is that students are not an important part of this university until they graduate and put money back into it. And maybe students pick up on that attitude.

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Sara Ziegler is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Sioux Falls, S.D. This column originally ran on March 29, 1999.