On Feb. 21, a fight broke out in the cafeteria at Alabama State University.
By early Tuesday morning, a video of the incident was on YouTube.
Apparently, the school’s football team fought a rival group known as the Mobile-born students.
From the look of the video, bystanders tried to avoid the chaos with limited success. Thankfully, there were only minor injuries, and campus police are investigating.
Of course, this isn’t the first time students have exhibited extreme immaturity in a place of higher education.
Events like this happen all too often on college campuses all over the United States.
Students bring their childish behavior and mentality from high school.
Some students are so concerned about coming off as cool and tough to their peers that they forget or completely ignore the reason they attend college in the first place, which is to get a quality education.
What these students fail to realize is that when they engage in immature behavior such as fighting or public intoxication, etc., they are shaming themselves, their family and their school.
Comedian and radio personality Ricky Smiley, a graduate of Alabama State, expressed his embarrassment at the video on his morning radio show. I can only imagine that other alumni share the same feeling.
These students need to realize that while their bad behavior might come off as cool to their peers, ultimately, they as individuals will pay the price.
Trying to impress friends by showing them a persona of big, bad and tough doesn’t impress anyone. Behavior like that should be left in high school.
College is about trying and experiencing new things, opening up the mind and changing the way one looks at the world.
Perhaps it’s time these students realize that the only opinion that should matter is their own. Going along with the crowd will only lead to trouble. Why jeopardize your future for people you won’t even remember 10 years from now?
