Fear and Loathing at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center

From New Era News: Yeah Dudes! Get Ready to Rage . . . at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center?

Puke-y Sorority Party Held At Underground Railroad Museum

A couple things come to mind, immediately, upon reading that headline.

First, what in the world is the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center doing hosting college formals? Aren't such events held in ballrooms, hotels or convention centers?

Second: even if the NURFC has the facilities to host a formal of this kind, why in the world would they want to? I realize that museums in culture-starved America need to find new and innovative ways to raise funds, but when the money made from hosting a college formal is subtracted from the costs of cleaning up afterward, anyone can tell you it's a losing proposition.

The third question that comes to mind centers, of course, on the outlandish behavior of the revelers. But in this day and age in which contempt for the past is viewed as savvy and hip -- where complete ignorance of events that didn't happen in the past year is a shameful given -- the onus is on those who know better -- ie, party planners, museum officials -- to simply not allow college students and alcohol anywhere near the museum.

Unfortunately, that third thought sounds too much like blaming the victim, but we live in the world -- the people who know better need to be vigilant against those (painfully numerous) people who don't know better.

Maybe it all seems so clear to me because I've been on both sides of the drunken stupidity at formals: as guest and as employee of a hotel hosting such an event.

As a guest, my sins were measured in decibels. As the hour grew later, and I got drunker, I got much, much louder with unfunny, profane jokes. I have never been into property destruction. Not so much because I'm so peaceful and just; simply, I'm not slick enough to get away with it, and paying fines and for damage would have cut into my drinking money.

Live to drink another day, was my motto at that time.

Also, I've been the clerk working the front desk of a hotel that hosted revelers and had to field noise complaints from other guests, and heard the horror stories from the maintenance crew the next morning. Nothing I heard surprised me.

Of course drunken idiots were running through the hotel at all hours like banshees.

Of course horny, drunken couples were having sex on every available surface, whether in public, a stairwell, or a closed, darkened conference room. (I imagined the next occupants of the conference room going in after the maintenance crew had cleaned the place up, and detecting the subversive scent of sex, and one crusty businessman saying to another, "Jeez, Bill, smells like a deal was made here over the weekend!")

Of course the swimming pool was commandeered by drunks hours after the pool had been closed.

Of course the rooms occupied by the revelers were destroyed, vomit-tainted and piss-christened.

Of course.

The only thing that surprised me was the surprise of others at the aftermath.

In case there's anyone reading this who doesn't already know: mixing alcohol, college students, formal dress and some concocted occasion boils together to create an amoeba-like toxic entity that causes outrage and nastiness to seep through the location of the event like a chemical spill.

Like all such spills, this drunken-college-student entity seeks the lowest points of a structure, the furthest corners, and has no regard whether it's pulling a fire extinguisher from the wall or walking off with an expensive vase from the ballroom.

It's wreaks havoc on a location like water damage after a fire.

For some reason in our culture, being a college student is not only a license to be an outright idiot, it's a mandate to be as stupid, inconsiderate and destructive as possible when the right set of variables present themselves.

Far from college being the intellectual haven of book-learning, it's basically a stained and scarred chili pot boiling over with debauchery.

Like driving an ornery old car with a manual transmission: some people achieve the balance between the clutch and gas pedals to continue the forward momentum. And some of us can attend college, and emerge once in a while from that chili pot of bad behavior to get an education and formulate a future.

But if you are the curator or proprietor of a museum or a location that houses or possesses objects that you can't bear to have covered in vomit, piss or residual sex juice, then maybe you should forego hosting a college formal at your venue.

Because that boiling chili pot of licentious, destructive stupidity lacks one crucial component: a lid.

The fourth question that comes to mind is this: Where are the dumb cunts of Alpha Xi Deltas going to have their formal next year? The Holocaust Museum?

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