Yet another black eye for HC

www.telegram.com/news/20190328/video-captures-repellent-behavior-language-directed-at-uber-driver-in-worcester

Just when you think we’ve hit rock bottom....
Alumn, pull the plug on your donations until real change at the top is made. That’s the only way they will ever listen to us.

How is real change at the top going to solve drunken behavior by HC students living off campus?  What would you propose that new leaders at HC do about this?  
 

HC has a serious problem with too many students drinking alcohol to excess. The numbers show up in the schools Clery report, and parents have specifically raised the issue with TPTB. The school has programs and initiatives, one of which starts before students even enroll. I believe the college would readily acknowledge they haven't found the answer to this yet.

The college bought and demolished half the houses on Caro, but that only lessened the concentration of drunken parties in a particular neighborhood. The college bought and demolished the house on City View where one football player stabbed another.

In the case of the Uber incident, according to the T&G, the students were identified by other students as seniors, and associated with HC athletics.

While the students shouldn't have reacted that way, the Uber driver was clearly instigating and looking to get some good content for his dashboard camera.

If you're driving an Uber around Worcester at 1:30 AM on the Friday-Saturday of St. Patrick's Day weekend, who do you think you're going to be picking up? People on their way home from the library?

Complaining about driving drunk people home at 1:30 AM is like moving into a house or apartment on Caro or Boyden St and complaining that you live near college kids and and a college. Or moving into a house next to train tracks and complaining that trains are going by. If you don't want to deal with driving drunk people home, turn off your Uber app and go home.

I just assumed it was the new PC/SJW term of the month? It's impossible to keep up with all of them.

A) Students trashing an Uber driver's car and belongings because of any dispute should not be tolerated.
B) Students cursing out an Uber driver, while clearly intoxicated, can probably be reasonably understood, but should not need to be reasonably tolerated.
C) An Uber driver surprised, groaning, and complaining about picking up drunk fare from bars at 1:00 AM or later is completely outrageous. You know that you're picking up a young person (info on the Uber app). You know you are picking them up from a bar (info on the Uber app). You know it's late (info on a clock). Yes, they shouldn't be puking and blacked out asleep in your backseat. No, they shouldn't cram 5 people in the car if you're not comfortable driving them. But, you shouldn't accept a fare, drive to the location, and NOT expect some of those things to happen, only to cancel the trip on them, attempt to bill them a cancellation penalty fee, and put up an instigating video as an impartial recounting of the events.
D) Some drunken athletes doing #@*&$~!ty things at HC is not a new or novel experience. However, when alcohol is involved, that behavior is not limited to or exclusive of athletes either. It has less to do with what team they play on, and more to do with what type of person they are.

In no way excusing the behavior of the students.  After getting out and surveying the damage to his vehicle, why did the driver hang out there?  If you want the wait for cops to come and show them the vandalism to your vehicle fine.  Otherwise hanging around is promoting the escalation of events.  It might not be wrong, but certainly isn't as smart as diffusing the situation by simply driving away

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On a slight tangent, it is also a negative statement  about the student heavy neighborhood that the girl at the end of the video felt the need to take an Uber the 200 yards from Boyden St to Wheeler

If you take a look at the comments on YouTube, you'll see people representing themselves from TV stations asking permission to use the video, presumably for an upcoming news story. Expect the negative publicity to continue.

Not condoning the behavior in the least, but this is a problem everywhere and not just at HC.

Hopefully the students involved learn very valuable lessons. 1) don't act like an a**hole. 2) in this day and age, if you're out in public, expect anything you say or do to be recorded. There's no such thing as an expectation of privacy anymore. Consequences of social media and every phone having a camera and microphone. 3) focus on #1.

It was around 20 years ago too at HC, and many other college campuses. And I'm sure it still takes place. But with camera phones and dash cams and all that other technology available, it's getting recorded a lot more. 

The video was taken down by either:

1.) The Uber driver who posted it.  (most likely), or, 
2.) The Uber driver who posted it acting on direction from Uber. or,
3.) A student shown in the video complaining to YouTube, and YouTube took it down.

HC would have no basis for asking YouTube to take down the video.  None of the video was shot on campus, nor does it depict activities on campus.

The Uber driver stated he called 911.  The Worcester police have no record of such a call. .The video was purportedly recorded on St. Patrick's Day, or more likely the night of Saturday, March 16.  The temperature in the wee hours that night was around 30 degrees, and the students, given how they were dressed, must have been using alcohol for warmth.

I had a more than passing interest in the video, in that I thought it may have shown 31 Boyden, a property HC surely covets, the Commandment aside. 

Behind a paywall
Please post

Tom, the recital of vulgarities was so continuous and so unoriginal that I soon tuned it ou. Its possible in the catalogue of epithets that various slurs were uttered only because these happened to be in their schoolyard vocabulary, not that the driver was a member of a particular class (e.g., disabled, gay, etc.)


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