- Illustration by Emily Bernstein
Last Saturday, September 18 around 11:45PM, a group of five unsuspecting freshmen were sitting outside of the back entrance of Larrabee House, enjoying the cool night air, when the evening suddenly took an alarming turn. A clearly inebriated member of the Coast Guard wandered, shirtless and bleeding profusely from his right temple, out of a nearby path.
Rijul Ray ’14 and the bleeding student locked eyes for a moment, and suddenly the student began storming towards the group with little warning. Ray did not stick around to see what happened next: he bolted out of there, another freshman in tow. This decision proved to be a wise one.
The drunken young man lurched toward the group and began speaking with only mild intelligibility. “They want me to go to the woods!” he yelled, grabbing Michael Murchison ’14. Afterward, he took a swing at Alex Onik ’14, who narrowly dodged it and was left unharmed. As Ray contacted campus security, a crowd began to gather around the spectacle, causing Murchison and another student, Nels Christenson ’14, to remove themselves from the scene. They entered the back door of Larrabee in an attempt to seek haven in their basement room.
There was only one problem: the Coast Guard student had followed them in.
“I felt raw fear, man,” Ray said following the event. “I’ve never felt fear the way I did that night.”
Chris King ’13 arrived with a few friends just as things seemed to be going even further downhill. He quickly made his way to Larrabee’s basement and helped restrain the student, who had attempted to corner Christenson in the hallway of his dorm.
The student was banging on one of the doors, making violent threats, when King got a hold of him and managed to sit him down.
Duncan Spaulding ‘12 was visiting a friend upstairs, when a few students came running into the room. “They said there was a kid trying to kill someone in the basement and they needed help,” he said. “We ran down and Chris started talking to the kid and asking him to calm down. The guy’s entire face was red with blood.”
“I just grabbed him, and I held him there once everyone ran away,” said King. “He was trying to break into the room they were in, and I just calmed him down a bit until Campus Safety came. I have no idea what made me do it. I saw him throw a punch, so I grabbed him because I didn’t want him to really injure somebody.”
Spaulding called Campus Safety at 12:03 AM, and they arrived quickly from three different entrances. Once they arrived, the student began trying to explain the details of the night to the officers and King.
“He said that he got kicked out of a room by a couple of girls, and four Conn guys came and beat the hell out of him,” said King. “He was really hammered when he was telling the story. But if I were to guess, I’d say the girls kicked him out, and the guys thought he was giving them a hard time so they beat him up.”
When the ruckus finally subsided, the student was removed by Campus Safety. The only remaining sign that anything had happened was the bloodstained handprint on Christenson’s shirt from where he had been grabbed.
Anyone who has ventured out of his or her dorm on a Thursday or Saturday has no doubt noticed the distinctive blue and white uniform of many a Coast Guard student.
“I would rather Coasties didn’t touch me when I’m inebriated – or sober, for that matter,” said sophomore Zoë Lieb, in regards to their fairly consistent presence at campus parties. She’s hardly alone; the student from Saturday’s incident was on campus primarily to seek out girls.
Alternately, jabs, sneers and, as this incident proves, physical violence, are used against Coast Guard members upon their every visit. That Saturday, Conn students were heard yelling comments to the uniformed like “My tax dollars are paying for your education,” and “At least we’ve got real girls.”
The Coast Guard visitors generally aren’t considered very dangerous and they will probably continue to be treated with the same terse civility they always have. But on a campus where the honor code asks us to treat others with integrity, for who is the coast less clear?
Additional reporting by Lilah Raptopoulos
That is all.
I think the loaded comments started with the original news “story”.
the final line in the mission statement of the academy states that the cadets who attend seek to “serve their country and humanity.”
i don’t expect someone who willingly shells out $200,000 for a degree in theater to comprehend what the word service” means, but let me see if i can clarify…
service means waking up at 6am and putting on a uniform in pristine condition. service means saluting officers of higher rank. service means devoting the day to school, the afternoon to physical fitness, and the spare time between to military obligation. service means using “sirs” and “ma’ams.” service means giving up summer vacation in favor of training aboard CG cutters. most of all, service means giving nine year to protect and defend the citizens of the united states, including jerell mays, the biased author of this article.
feel free to thank me, jerell, for devoting every minute of every day to protecting your right to free speech…your right to personally insult what i have decided to do with my life.
as far as this ridiculous comment is concerned–>At least we’ve got real girls.”
at least i’ll have a decently paying job in five years. please be sure to include fried with my shake when i see you at the mcdonald’s drive through window.
BGB has face of tiger, and roar of lion
BGB has the roar of a lion
Should you find yourself in an odd fear or begin to think so poorly about the CG as this individual has, remind yourself that propaganda is a powerful tool even used today. Perhaps it’s just the hormones raging within the CC men’s bodies competing against the CGA Gentleman’s but this article has been skewed to one side. I would like to draw attention to the artwork posted on the site at the bottom and the similarities of concept between the two. Any art major or person with intelligence to the interpretation of a gesture (every living person in society) should see that they are both the same form of propaganda. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_bjqmGmHDb1w/SUPpTl-5aKI/AAAAAAAABvs/UltgDaBXSEA/s320/anti-japanese-propaganda-poste-+hate.jpg
Parallel granted but I think the artist intended to play off such cliches and precedents for humor. It’s not propaganda if it’s a joke about propaganda.
Indeed a biased article. It is, however, an odd culture clash when one institution is a private, liberal, college primarily consisting of students from the northeast, and the other is a public institution with students from all over the U.S., many from cultures drastically different from those in Boston and New York.
My point in bringing this up is that if Coast Guard students decide to spend time socializing on Conn’s campus, they have to be aware of these cultural differences–this fact does not justify mistreatments by Conn students–but it is to say that it is understandable why students at Conn resent the presence of individuals who not only do not share their culture (which is fine), but who then proceed to spend time at Conn ONLY FOR THE SAKE OF PICKING-UP WOMEN.
With no effort from Coasties to engage in the plutonic, innocuous, cultural aspects of Conn College, they have became rightfully vilified as aggressive men on the prowl for “pieces of ass”, rather than as thoughtful men of service. This small group of Coast Guard men reflects as poorly on their institution, as the meatheads who assaulted them reflect on Conn.
debatable at best…coasties attend conn college music events, educational lectures, and even take classes on campus…they don’t only walk across the street to find women. and idk where you were going with the “not from boston and new york thing” but you lost me there
How exactly is that an odd cultural clash? The student body of both institutions chose places that reflected their values and aspirations. The fact that the balance of the student body at CC is more interested in philosophizing about ways to fix the country without actually doing anything and the Coasties are more interested in going out there and keeping our livelihoods safe is merely a reflection of the people they are.
There is no culture that CC presents that the Coastie’s should have any obligation to adopt. CC is no different from any other upscale university in the continental United States, whereas CGA is one of five schools of its kind. Were CC students as worldly minded as they seem to think they are, it would behoove them to make an ounce of effort to understand where the Coasties are coming from as they are the more rare of the two.
Also, could you even begin to show me a mass of college males – and females for that matter- who do not go to parties – any college parties – for the sole purpose of picking up women/men? That is the POINT of said parties. The parties the Coasties are attending are not private birthday parties or small hang outs of a select group of students; they are the same parties that college Freshmen flood in their naive and drunken excitement over not being at home any longer. These are hardly exclusive gatherings, which supports my point that most of the people in attendance are there solely to pick up people with whom to hook up.
I would assume that when you mentioned the ‘plutonic’ nature of CC student body, you were not inferring that the students are, in actuality, rocks formed by the solidification of magma? Because that would be irrelevant.
Your argument should not only be refined by word choice, but also by the reality that Coastie men are no different in this way from any other college men.. boys.. They are arguably in fact much more respectable in whole than any other body of college males.
The true responsibility in this issue lies with the women who choose to attend said parties dressed in a manner that is meant to solicit the same behavior you are condemning. When choosing to dress in such a manner, a woman cannot honestly discriminate among those whose eyes fall upon her and choose to act on it. Dress in a more casual and conservative manner, and the coasties, as well as everyone else, will leave you alone.
Clearly, one of the primary purposes of large college parties is for flirtation and, as a result, Coasties are often only seen on campus exclusively in the context of picking-up women at parties. This leads to an understandable misconception of CGA students and does not reflect the reality of the wider Coast Guard student body. That being said, Coast Guard students may attend other events at Conn but as an active student on Conn’s campus I have never, in three years, seen a Coast Guard student at any college event other than at the obvious, bland, college “rager” within the context of attempted female pick-ups. I can only express views based on my experiences and I would have loved to have met CGA students at ANY tamer parties, music events, or college event.
Secondly, it is necessary to address your first two paragraphs because, if they represent a general Coast Guard attitude, than they are at the heart of the animosity between the two student bodies.
“There is no culture that CC presents that the Coastie’s should have any obligation to adopt. CC is no different from any other upscale university in the continental United States, whereas CGA is one of five schools of its kind. Were CC students as worldly minded as they seem to think they are, it would behoove them to make an ounce of effort to understand where the Coasties are coming from as they are the more rare of the two.”
The fact that CGA is a more “unique” institution than CC does not translate to a more valuable education. I do not think you will find a single person at Conn who does not believe your education is anything other than important, impressive, and challenging. I have the feeling I would be hard pressed to find many individuals at CGA who feel the same about a liberal arts education.
While I deeply respect your commitment to your work and the depth of your discipline please cut the self-righteousness. It was your choice to attend CGA and, while it was a noble one, it was not necessarily more noble than students who choose to attend a liberal arts institution and, as a result, win grants to study disease prevention, undertake original research, or become one of the many graduates serving American communities and building America’s reputation abroad (CC is a top producer of Fulbrights, TFA, and Peace Corps), all of which are pivotal means through which to serve our country–the latter of which are multi-year commitments. A healthy democracy needs to be physically defended but, as I’m sure you have learned at the academy, there is significantly more to the defense of democracy and of citizenship than physical defense. If you care, Google the liberal arts and democracy and read about the critical connection between the two.
What Conn students should take from CGA students is a sense of responsibility, conviction, and discipline, in their actions. Alternately, unless students CGA care about culture, the environment, science, history, education, economics, art, and individuals who are passionate about all of the above and more, than Conn has little to offer them. Case in point, the education and the cultures of the two schools are extremes. To be good citizens it is imperative that students at each respective institution understand the value of the education offered at the other. CGA, per nature of its mission, offers a severely limited curriculum and culture. Megan, I would hope that as someone representing our country, you can absorb a bit of the broad intellectual culture on Conn’s campus. Indeed, it is a culture worth adopting, but you won’t find it at the Conn events which your classmates most typically frequent.
hey “guest”,
megan put it will when she said that the only point of parties is to pick up girls/guys. obviously the cga doesnt have parties, so where else would they go?
and fyi, as a cga cadet i actually do have friends over at conn. and there have benn many attempts to reinstate the friendly relationship between cga and conn, with conn never following through.
The article was pretty piss-poor, but there’s a lot of nasty and misplaced anger floating around here. We get what you do. A lot of us, the majority, respect you.
So I find incredibly frustrating when the majority of what I see here is a bunch of cadets generalizing the whole of Conn as unwelcoming, useless, stuck-up weaklings.
Try coming to a lecture or taking a class. Come see a play, a concert or a dance show. If you’re going to try and generalize about Conn, come up and see more than one facet of us. We work hard too, and are passionate about a lot more than liquor. It just turns out that booze is all a lot of CG sees. PLEASE don’t base your opinion on the actions of the loudest drunks on a boozy Saturday night.
@@i mean, you have a camel as your mascot- come on buddy, get off the cross. I’ll help ya down.
Apparently you’re passionate about roughing up servicemen. Give them a break; they’re in one of the toughest academic schools in the nation. Who the hell beats a plastered partier to within an inch of his life? Ray, you’re such a pussy. If someone is bleeding from the temple and is completely drunk, wouldn’t you, as a concerned citizen, want to make sure they were ok?
Probably not, but no one “understands” you guys.
I am sad for Conn if this article is a representation of the education students are receiving. Pity the parents who’re paying for it. I agree with the post “I feel stupider after reading this article.” Very disturbing!