Our most humble apologies to state House Speaker Rick Johnson. It seems that when we scolded the LeRoy Republican for making offhanded comments labeling college students as hoodlums. We weren't aware of his prophetic abilities.
Kudos are well deserved for him as, indeed, Sunday's mayhem at MSU proved his point.
Hardly.
The House speaker's statement that "The taxpayers of the state are paying a lot of good money to educate kids in these universities and by gosh, they ought to behave" because he is "sick and tired of watching university kids tear university campuses apart every time their basketball team wins a tournament" is just as vile now as it was when he made it a few months ago.
We were just happy to hear Johnson's spokeswoman and other legislators say Sunday's melee in East Lansing, while disgusting, won't play a major role in higher education funding decisions.
Of course the chaos shouldn't play any role whatsoever in funding decisions.
It is not the duty of the Legislature to punish universities for the actions of a select group of their student populations. In our society, we use a judicial system to discipline individuals who require punishment.
Although riots often cast gloom over a university's reputation, the actions of a few hoodlums who choose MSU as their riot venue does not define the community. And all legislators, including the House speaker, should be professional enough to understand that concept.
The events of Sunday do not give Johnson's previous comments any more validity than they had when he uttered them. And it is still improper for the state House speaker to pigeon-hole any state demographic.
Our elected officials should be educated enough in their life experiences to understand the actions of a few do not represent the mentality of the whole.
The actions of 2,000 people - not all students - is not very representative of a university population that boasts a student body of more than 44,000 scholars.
As university spokesman Terry Denbow has pointed out, MSU is a diverse community complete with "both winners and losers." And it is not the duty of Lansing to penalize MSU for its losers. We are perfectly capable of taking care of them on our own.
MSU is not a "riot school" and the responsible members of this community will continue to see that it doesn't become one.
This community has made great strides to see the trend of riots that culminated in the March 27-28, 1999 riot doesn't rear its ugly head again. And, as they should, law enforcement agencies will do their best to see Sunday's vandals are prosecuted so the message is delivered clearly that such behavior will not be tolerated in East Lansing.
