'A RIOT IS AN UGLY THING': Remember that line by Inspector Kemp (Kenneth Mars) in "Young Frankenstein"? Michelle Cottle of "The New Republic" expresses the same sentiment after getting caught up in the near-riot in College Park, Md., after the Terrapins won the national basketball championship Monday night. What she saw was disturbing enough, but what really upset her were the double standards of the police:

Still, you have to wonder why we tolerate--condone even--this kind of destructive B.S. from coddled, affluent suburban kids, many of whose only encounter with "social injustice" was when Daddy refused to buy them a new Land Rover until their seventeenth birthday.

First of all, the idea that big segments of society condone this kind of behavior is a fantasy - indeed, these hijinks are often roundly denounced in the media, as they should be. But apparently the students are ripping shit up for the "wrong" reasons. Cottle seems to be suggesting that rioting is OK if you're a victim of "social injustice." Middle-class, mostly non-malevolent college kids getting a little rowdy during a victory celebration, well, THAT'S an outrage. But it's not like the cops weren't out in force:

If the urban assault vehicles seemed a bit much, you still had to feel for the cops. This white-collar breed of rioting puts police officers in an uncomfortable position. They are expected to prevent raging students from completely destroying local homes and businesses--but without getting too rough on the perps. It's true that officers are less likely to be seriously injured in these situations than, say, last spring's race riots in Cincinnati.

No kidding. Because of that, perhaps the administration was wise to suggest that the police take it a little easy on the students. But what's missing here is a little perspective on another, more important reason why the P.G. cops might have used less forceful techniques. The county's police force has been subjected to a series of investigations into allegations of police brutality by the media, led by the "Washington Post." What turned up was not pretty. Suffice it to say that the Prince George's police force has been a little trigger-happy in the past. With that in mind, when the whole country is watching what's happening in your county after the final notes of "One Shining Moment" fade away, it might be wise to tell the local gendarmes to go a bit easy on the kids. Of course, the cops weren't happy about it:

But many of Prince George's County's finest made it clear that they resented having to stand around while snot-nosed college kids trashed their town and threatened their colleagues. One officer--we'll call him Bert--expressed disgust that, in all of last weekend's chaos, one arrest was made. "One." He shook his head in disbelief.

Again, given this police force's shoddy history, shouldn't they be applauded for showing restraint? Unless you think "coddled, affluent suburban kids" deserve to get a truncheon upside the head for dropping trou. I certainly hope Cottle isn't suggesting there's a moral equivalence between College Park pranksters and the monsters in L.A. who pulled Reginald Denny from his truck and tried to smash his head in with a brick merely because he was white and in the wrong neighborhood. Oh, did I just needlessly inject race into this story? Well, she started it:

Trudging back to my car--which had fortunately been neither burned nor towed--I kept thinking back to something a young, black kid had muttered to a friend early in the evening. "You should have seen it here Saturday," he said in obvious wonder. "These white folks was out here just burning shit in the middle of the street." ...The kid was clearly amazed that young people would be allowed to run wild like that with virtual immunity. With the sounds of shattering glass and howled profanity echoing in the street behind me, I had to wonder the same thing.

Ah yes, the imputation of official racism. No mention that the P.G. police force is 41 percent black; more importantly, no mention of the actual diversity of the students at Maryland. This is from the university's own Diversity News Bureau:

About 25 percent of the university's almost 32,500 students are minorities. More than 2,300 foreign students, representing over 100 countries, attend the university.

Now suppose the P.G. cops went in and started busting heads like they clearly wanted to do. Do you think the image of cops bashing up one of the nation's most racially diverse student bodies would have been applauded in the pages of "The New Republic"? Do I really even have to ask?