By Emmet Costel

Ever been to a Macalester hockey game? If so then you know about the euphoria of yelling your head off, heckling the opposition, crowding around one another for warmth like imperial penguins, losing yourself in the anonymity and roiling ecstasy of the intoxicated crowd.whatever tickles your pickle, right? In the cozy bubble of the hockey arena, similar to the bubble from which they came, Macalester students produce an experience that is almost cultish. This is all well and good until people begin to forget themselves. This story begins at 10:24 on the 84 bus heading south on Snelling Avenue. As I get on at Portland Avenue, I see it’s a new driver. In my head I tell him to brace himself. What proceeds to happen is tantamount to watching drunken sardines jam pack themselves into a can. Macalester students hop on the bus at Grand Avenue and off soon thereafter at Ford Parkway, followed by a quick jaunt over to the Charles M. Schulz-Highland Arena. On the way in I cannot help but notice a larger than life Snoopy statue in hockey gear honoring his creator. Through the doors and I’m back in the cold and the first thing to be heard is the resounding cheer, “WE WILL FIGHT YOU!”

Now my first thought would be, “The other team’s fans must be a bunch of a–.”

A quick once over unfortunately reveals a throng of Macalester youths seething with bloodlust, continuing to belt out “WE WILL FIGHT YOU!” One might be inclined to write this off as a manifestation of Macalester’s frustration over its athletic impotence.

Dave, who stands at my side, shrugs his shoulders and dismisses it with, “They know no better.”

The game nears its conclusion and the penguins begin their migration back to lose themselves as flotsam and jetsam in the eddies of the night. Shuffling along, I do a double take when I notice Snoopy has been defaced. Somebody decided to express his depth for creative destruction by tearing Snoopy’s ear off.

“Now that just pisses me off!”

Is it Tom foolery, shenanigans, lack of respect, hi-jinx and mayhem, acting a fool, or just fulfilling the primal desire to act with abandon, turning one’s senses over to the slack reins of primitive debauchery?

Henceforth, hockey games will be blessed with the presence of Vanessa L. Seljeskog, Macalester’s Associate Athletics Director, and an officer from the Sheriff’s office who have to patrol Macalester hockey games because someone had to act a fool. Now that’s classy; nannies are needed to curtail Macalester’s party exuberance.

Hmm, can anyone say.spoiled, self., ign.

Continuing in this theme, my friends and I recently hosted a swinging shindig at our house, which swung out of control as the sardines piled in. From then on, things went from partygoers passed out on their feet supported by the crushing heave of the crowd to stalwart smokers unruffled by our pleas to take their drags round back, back to young upstarts telling me how I should run a party. Without further ado, the police roll in and the house goes to 16 from 130. As we go through the movements, I ask the forewoman leading the purge, “Who are bigger assholes, students from Macalester or St. Thomas?” Without a second thought she tells me, “Macalester students are arrogant jerks!” This would be the third time I’ve gotten this response.

At times it seems Macalester stares down Summit Avenue, thinking “We’re better than they are.” This hubris is brought into question when St. Thomas bears a reputation for fostering a community of civility in contrast to Macalester’s marred record, which boasts words of civic respect peppered with deeds that speak to the lack thereof. One would think that Macalester would hold itself as a student body to higher standards of social comportment as they condemn their superiority at the beginning of every fall semester in accordance with the Princeton Review. Macalester, a little humility is in order. You have more than proven yourself to be human.

The aforementioned scenes of social ineptitude are recurring. They are even captured by winning videos used by Macalester’s fundraising Step Forward campaign, all the way to the classroom where one would hope questions of civic engagement and social ethics would not only be contemplated but internalized before Macalester students host another politically incorrect party.

As Macalester works hard in fortifying its pillars, built on ivory foundations not yet covered in ivy, a trend begins to make itself clear; there are those within Macalester that guilty of for the same social incompetence at soccer parties, my parties, hockey games, which reflects poorly on our classroom education. What good is an ivory tower when it reeks with the spilt beer born from lack of social sensibilities? When you venture outside its walls with noses in the air, the tower is all you will see as you step on the toes of society.