That might be the last Midnight Madness

[SUfanNC]

I just don't buy the argument that the perpetrators would not have been there but for the presence of Wale. If you buy the stereotypical argument that rap appeals to "those people," then there's an equally prevalent stereotype that basketball appeals to "those people." So unless you want to eliminate basketball from the event too, I'm not sure what you can do. There's absolutely no way to prove that the troublemakers were only there because some rapper showed up (short of actually asking them), and it just strikes me as lazy to blame a genre of music for what happened.

There were two magor things going on at the Dome on friday SU basketball and a chance to see a popular rapper for free. I believe most of the troublesome crowd was not there for basketball. That leaves one thing.

 

[OrangeChris]

Except for the simple fact that violence follows that genre around more a opposed to other things.

I hear what you're saying, and I'm not disputing that. What I disagree with is the idea that these guys wouldn't have been there if Wale wasn't performing. I think they would have. S.U. hosts rap & hip hop artists multiple times a year. Nobody ever gets stabbed at any of them. The difference is that this one was FREE. I think that's the issue that should be addressed: charge admission (even if only a nominal amount like a couple bucks). I think that would go a lot further towards preventing something like this from happening again than the choice of a musical act.

 

[OrangeXtreme]

I just don't buy the argument that the perpetrators would not have been there but for the presence of Wale. If you buy the stereotypical argument that rap appeals to "those people," then there's an equally prevalent stereotype that basketball appeals to "those people." So unless you want to eliminate basketball from the event too, I'm not sure what you can do. There's absolutely no way to prove that the troublemakers were only there because some rapper showed up (short of actually asking them), and it just strikes me as lazy to blame a genre of music for what happened.

There have been hundreds of basketball games at the Dome since 1980.

There have never been any assaults or stabbings before last Friday. Could it be because troublemakers aren't attracted to basketball?

There was also a Midnight Madness event held back in 1994 at Manley (that was actually held at Midnight). There was no trouble. There was also no free entertainment, just hoops.

 

[OrangeChris]

There have been hundreds of basketball games at the Dome since 1980.

There have never been any assaults or stabbings before last Friday. Could it be because troublemakers aren't attracted to basketball?

There was also a Midnight Madness event held back in 1994 at Manley (that was actually held at Midnight). There was no trouble. There was also no free entertainment, just hoops.

There have also been plenty of hip hop acts that have performed at the Dome, including a Rick Ross/Ludacris double bill earlier this year (both bigger names than Wale). Nobody got stabbed at any of those either. They also weren't free.

 

[OrangeXtreme]

There have also been plenty of hip hop acts that have performed at the Dome, including a Rick Ross/Ludacris double bill earlier this year (both bigger names than Wale). Nobody got stabbed at any of those either.

Free admission?

Open to the general public, or just SU / ESF students?

Pat down searches and/or metal detectors at the gates?

 

[orangecuse]

Except for the simple fact that violence follows that genre around more a opposed to other things.

No real surprise when it's that genre's pure essence...the overwhelming tilt of the lyrics speaks for itself.

 

[orangefan13]

This wasn't a basketball game. It was a 20 minute mens scrimmage, rap concert with people talking on the mic. . Wish there was a way to get the alumni's out there a week before they started the NBA season. They practically start the same week.

I suspect turning off the lights didn't help. Surprised to see the event closed early after the scrimmage and during the dunk contest though. Wonder if most of the tension built before the mens scrimmage. I liked the lights out effect but it had to add to the trouble, and I was under the impression that most of the trouble happened during the dunk contest when it was lights out and they closed the event early.

 

[Melancer46]

Do you have any more info on the bolded portion? After reading your post, I mentioned it in passing to some fellow alums and they were aghast at that part.

On a somewhat related note... has anybody walked up University Ave. lately? They just spent all that money to gentrify it, and literally overnight half the new lights were knocked out, all the benches and new signage were tagged with graffiti, and all the pretty new stuff was defaced or destroyed. Someone said it best earlier in this thread: "this is why we can't have nice things."

Don't have more info. Just the rumor that's been circulating for awhile now. The Student Association denies it though.

 

[OrangeOnions]

There are a lot of parallels between this event and the Beverly Hills 90210 episode, "Home and Away" in the epic season 3. There are also a lot of differences. The students of West Beverly are able to co-exist with students from their rival Shaw High following gang shootings of 2 of their students during a football game. The peace pipe here is rap music and the herb is David Silver and a Shaw student. Enjoy!

 

[Eric15]

To play Devil's Advocate, let's say security was beefed up big time in advance of Midnight Madness, with people getting frisked upon entry and having to go through metal detectors, and then nothing bad happened.

It honestly wouldn't surprise me at all if many of the Monday Morning QBs complaining about the lack of security on Friday would also be complaining about the delay and inconvenience of getting into the Dome in the above hypothetical.

 

[690West]

There are a lot of parallels between this event and the Beverly Hills 90210 episode, "Home and Away" in the epic season 3. There are also a lot of differences. The students of West Beverly are able to co-exist with students from their rival Shaw High following gang shootings of 2 of their students during a football game. The peace pipe here is rap music and the herb is David Silver and a Shaw student. Enjoy!

I still tell my wife if 1995 Kelly Taylor comes walkin thru my door, I'm outta here. She understands

 

[OrangeOnions]

I still tell my wife if 1995 Kelly Taylor comes walkin thru my door, I'm outta here. She understands

You can have 1995 Kelly Taylor and I'll take 1996 through present.

 

[Rocco]

This thread is ridiculous on many levels. This should've never happened in the first place. Shame on SU.

 

[FreakTalksAboutSU]

Random textual diarrhea

1- Who the is Wale?

2- Midnight Madness should be a free event with tickets offered first to ST holders, then to students, and then to the general public. It should be a basketball event. There should be a scrimmage, maybe a dunk contest, maybe a 3 point contest. bring back some former players, whatever. No music, no "entertainment". You may get 1/2 the buzz and 1/3 the attendance, but it will be about what it was intended to be about.

3- Makes me very sad to hear about the decline in the neighborhoods around campus. I cannot tell you how many times me and my friends would stagger down Euclid from a house parts, stagger down Marshall Street from Darwins, whatever, when attending there from 95-99. Now, I'm not endorsing "staggering down the street", I'm reflecting on a period of time in which, frankly, it was nice to be able to. Was it entirely safe and smart? I don't know. But the only people who ever said a word to us that werent students were the once in a while vagrants asking for change outside of Convenient Food Mart, and truth be told, we knew many of them by name as they often did us..."favors" in our early years. It makes you wonder if SPD focused its resources more on safety and less on undercover fake ID stakeouts if it would have made a difference in stemming the decline? I dont know if this is still a focus but I know in my years attending and the years immediately following it was a focus.

4- Important. As someone who hasnt been back there in a few years now, I am having a tough time mentally trying to parse the reality from the exaggeration in this thread. I feel like even when we were there, there were urban legends about the imminent dangers that surrounded us. Is it really THAT bad now? I mean, is the danger greater, or have our perspectives just changed? Probably some of both. Sad either way.

5- Is this really Westcott?
Long and rambling...just a thread that has weighed on me and I wanted to chime in.

Now off to Google this Wale guy. Whoever the hell he is.

 

[dollarbill44]

A couple of things:

1. Wasn't there a concert put on by the black pan-hellenic a few years back at Schine that ended in violence among townies? I believe there was a stabbing there.

2. I went to SU from '87-'91. It wasn't a good idea to walk around alone on M St. after 2:00 am then either. There were typically large groups of young men from the inner city hanging around and there were occasionally fights (no stabbings though). There were also cops on horseback almost every Friday and Saturday night. My roommate sophomore year got jumped by 2 guys near the Women's building on his way home (alone) one night. He was a tough guy and put some good licks into one of the attackers before they ran off but he got kicked in the face by the other guy and wound up with a bunch of stitches. If he didn't know how to handle himself, he may not have been so lucky.

3. I don't believe the gang initiation thing either. These rumors have been around for decades, ever since inner city gangs got big in the mid-80s. It used to be that they would drive around in the suburbs at night with their headlights out and if someone gave them a "courtesy flash", they would follow them home and kill them. I consider this an urban legend until proven otherwise.

4. Syracuse is a city in trouble. Anyone who has driven through the city over a period of time can't help but notice how down-trodden the south side has become. Actually, as soon as you enter the city from Onondaga Hill - just past St. Agnes cemetery, it looks and feels like a warzone. Venture down S. Salina until you cross 173 and it's downright scary-even during the daytime. I would put it right up there with driving in Newark, Camden or Trenton. You wouldn't have a free rap concert in those cities without a major security/police presence and not expect big trouble. Why do it at SU?

In summary, Syracuse has always had some issues since at least the '80s but the city as a whole is quite a bit worse off now and things need to be improved or SU (and consequently Syracuse) will take a big hit. I suspect this incident will hurt with some prospective students.

 

[OttoMets]

...

3- Makes me very sad to hear about the decline in the neighborhoods around campus. I cannot tell you how many times me and my friends would stagger down Euclid from a house parts, stagger down Marshall Street from Darwins, whatever, when attending there from 95-99. Now, I'm not endorsing "staggering down the street", I'm reflecting on a period of time in which, frankly, it was nice to be able to. Was it entirely safe and smart? I don't know. But the only people who ever said a word to us that werent students were the once in a while vagrants asking for change outside of Convenient Food Mart, and truth be told, we knew many of them by name as they often did us..."favors" in our early years. It makes you wonder if SPD focused its resources more on safety and less on undercover fake ID stakeouts if it would have made a difference in stemming the decline? I dont know if this is still a focus but I know in my years attending and the years immediately following it was a focus.

4- Important. As someone who hasnt been back there in a few years now, I am having a tough time mentally trying to parse the reality from the exaggeration in this thread. I feel like even when we were there, there were urban legends about the imminent dangers that surrounded us. Is it really THAT bad now? I mean, is the danger greater, or have our perspectives just changed? Probably some of both. Sad either way.

5- Is this really Westcott? .

3. No decline in neighborhoods around campus. With hundreds of units of public housing demolished in midtown in the last decade, a ton of students (many foreign students and theater kids) now live in neighborhoods north of the hill. To the east, the same middle and upper-middle class neighborhoods that existed in the early '90s exist today.

4. No, it's not that bad now. Too many muggings (my preferred number would be 0), of which none of us knows the details. Beyond that, urban legends and alarmist rhetoric passed along like a game of telephone.

5. Not Westcott, I don't think, but that block could be in that direction. The neighborhood northeast of Westcott still has two large housing projects and a good bit of criminal activity.

Weird direction this thread has taken. Syracuse is a city with good neighborhoods and bad. The university has long provided what a number of criminals consider easy targets. This is a problem that exists in all college towns and remains unresolved. Darn shame that students get held up on and around Euclid every so often (and all law enforcement agencies need to do a better job about deterring these crimes), but it's no different than Georgetown students getting smacked on the head while walking down P Street after they leave the bars. It's a problem but not an indictment of the area.

 

[OttoMets]

Venture down S. Salina until you cross 173 and it's downright scary-even during the daytime. I would put it right up there with driving in Newark, Camden or Trenton. ...

Maybe this was intended as hyperbole, but, uh, I don't agree.

 

[Oakland]

3. No decline in neighborhoods around campus. With hundreds of units of public housing demolished in midtown in the last decade, a ton of students (many foreign students and theater kids) now live in neighborhoods north of the hill. To the east, the same middle and upper-middle class neighborhoods that existed in the early '90s exist today.

It is very clear to me that the North side of the park (Madison) is far worse than it was in the late 70's when I lived there. My 4-plex apartment (in a nice old house) had a screened in pouch and the the main door was nicely made of wood: now the door has a very large piece of protective metal on it and the screened area is gone - it has a war zone look to it. And the bad section IMO has moved east up Salt Springs Rd towards DeWitt. South of the city also seems worse - almost a ghetto now not just a poor area. A real shame as many nice old houses are wrecks or demolished.

4. No, it's not that bad now. Too many muggings (my preferred number would be 0), of which none of us knows the details. Beyond that, urban legends and alarmist rhetoric passed along like a game of telephone.

5. Not Westcott, I don't think, but that block could be in that direction. The neighborhood northeast of Westcott still has two large housing projects and a good bit of criminal activity.

Weird direction this thread has taken. Syracuse is a city with good neighborhoods and bad. The university has long provided what a number of criminals consider easy targets. This is a problem that exists in all college towns and remains unresolved. Darn shame that students get held up on and around Euclid every so often (and all law enforcement agencies need to do a better job about deterring these crimes), but it's no different than Georgetown students getting smacked on the head while walking down P Street after they leave the bars. It's a problem but not an indictment of the area.

 

[OttoMets]

It is very clear to me that the North side of the park (Madison) is far worse than it was in the late 70's when I lived there. My 4-plex apartment (in a nice old house) had a screened in pouch and the the main door was nicely made of wood: now the door has a very large piece of protective metal on it and the screened area is gone - it has a war zone look to it. And the bad section IMO has moved east up Salt Springs Rd towards DeWitt. South of the city also seems worse - almost a ghetto now not just a poor area. A real shame as many nice old houses are wrecks or demolished.

I can't speak for the neighborhood in the '70s, but the stretch of East Genesee from about Cherry Street west to downtown was a flat-out bad neighborhood in the '80s and '90s. Since the housing projects have been demolished, things have changed for the better - bars, restaurants, and a numbers of new rental units. As for your house, most of the owners and managers of university-area rentals don't maintain their properties well. Sad but unsurprising that they've let your house go. Madison's got some good buildings (including a condo building, home to a number of faculty members, just a block from the park) and some nuisance student rentals.

Regarding Salt Springs, I know a number of young professionals who have bought in that neighborhood in recent years. It's pretty stable. Directly west of there, though, are those Croly/Fayette projects. Certainly a bad section. As are swaths of the south side, as you said.

 

[GardenOrange]

Oh, puhleeze.
All due respect but "inner-city trash" is code for Black...so let's not kid ourselves.
If I were to say "trailer trash", are you suggesting I could be talking about Mexicans? Seriously?
Let's not be naive- better that than putting one's head in the sand and not being real.
It was a sketchy comment that needed to be called out. JMHO

Politically correct horsesh#t is sketchy.

 

[cliftonparksufan]

I still tell my wife if 1995 Kelly Taylor comes walkin thru my door, I'm outta here. She understands

Sorry, unless your name is Dylan McKay, you stand no chance with Kelly.

 

[OrangeDW]

No real surprise when it's that genre's pure essence...the overwhelming tilt of the lyrics speaks for itself.

Wale is not known for violent lyrics or controversy whatsoever, so this generalization is very misinformed in this case. He made his name as a "smart" rapper who based an album on Seinfeld, and has recently changed directions a bit to where his music is more popular with the female fanbase. He's not the stereotypical violent "thug" rapper that many seem to be assuming.

 

[orangecuse]

Wale is not known for violent lyrics or controversy whatsoever, so this generalization is very misinformed in this case. He made his name as a "smart" rapper who based an album on Seinfeld, and has recently changed directions a bit to where his music is more popular with the female fanbase. He's not the stereotypical violent "thug" rapper that many seem to be assuming.

I could give a rats arse about Wale or what he's supposedly about. I was referencing rap in general, and undoubtedly, what is at the core of its essence. As you elude, he may not be known for his violent or controversial lyrics etc, but rap is. And, the specific troublesome crowd mentioned that was 'not the norm' were not specific disciples of Wale, but followers of rap in all of its comprehensiveness.

 

[zeekay]

Issue was not a rap concert but a free rap concert. Which is obviously not going to happen again in the future, so lesson learned for SU. What is everyone arguing about again?

 

[Shrmdougluvr]

Many different types of people act out at sporting events but let me know the next time a regular SU fan stabs someone at the Dome.

Woah woah woah. Apparently you weren't at the Dome when this guy single-handedly killed 7 Georgetown fans hurling his corduroy hat at unsuspecting victims Oddjob style, and using his shoelace as a makeshift garrote. He did it all without ever blinking.