This torched car, overturned during rioting but righted by morning, became a symbol of damage in Dinkytown last month.

taken from the Southeast Angle

"The crowd was a lot more violent," said Lt. Mike Fossum. "The mob mentality was much more aggressive than last year."

Those who were there compared the April 12?13 riots in Dinkytown and Stadium Village to disturbances after the University of Minnesota won last year's hockey title.

Others who saw TV or newspaper scenes of the mayhem following the second Gopher hockey championship drew parallels to chaos and looting in Iraq.

But for many Southeast residents, reports of drunken crowds damaging property and fighting with police recalled nothing so far away or long ago as the most recent house party down the block.

"Admittedly, we don't typically have overturned and burned cars, but the attitudes displayed Saturday that drove the excesses [are] often displayed in the larger parties" that draw hundreds, commented Como resident Wendy Menken. "The noise, vandalism, excessive alcohol consumption and aggressive behavior can all be present at a neighborhood party."

Asked about the topic of underage drinking at a Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Association meeting three days after the riots, Eric Dyer, a student living near Stadium Village, said, "The basements of rental properties are the speakeasies of our generation."

Dyer, president-elect of the Minnesota Student Association, said most students are "very, very mad" about the riots, while a few are "trying to make this into a tradition.

"That's scary," he said. "A tradition where we destroy things is ridiculous."

Students do share with longer-term residents the impulse to seek "a nice neighborhood atmosphere," Dyer said. "But at night, it seems to go away."

After his complaints about loud parties led to a telephoned death threat several years ago, Marcy-Holmes resident Kelly Carver was jolted into activism. Eventually, he saw a fraternity on his Fifth Street block shut down. Now it houses a Montessori school?but one whose Dumpster went up in flames last month as destruction in commercial districts spilled into residential areas.

It was a "dark and dismaying weekend for the university," said the university's community relations director, Jan Morlock, at the MHNA meeting. "We were not effective at preventing a riot." But City Councilmember Paul Zerby said it wasn't for lack of trying and lauded the efforts of the university to prepare for and prevent rioting, as well as the city emergency staff who responded, including fire fighters and police.

Still, Zerby said, "The U of M administration has to acknowledge responsibility for student conduct on or off campus." It's a topic sure to be discussed at a May 1 meeting of resident and business leaders called by university officials in response to the riots.

Carver said he's encouraged by the serious tone from the university since last month but hopes new school sanctions won't only apply to riotous behavior.

"If you took a poll of everyone around here and asked if they'd rather have one riot a year, or get woken up every night by party houses, they'd take the riot once a year," he said.

last revised: March 29, 2006