Two crowds of students ‘a stark contrasting picture’

Re: We’ll vote you out, students tell politicians — March 26

In recent weeks, I saw media coverage of two different crowds of students — the student revellers on Ezra Avenue in Waterloo celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, and the half million students in the “March for Our Lives” in Washington, D.C., New York City, Denver, Los Angeles and other cities, including parallel supportive marches also in Canada. The contrast in these two pictures could not be more stark.

The St. Patrick’s Day crowd consisted of self-indulgent students who took over a whole street with a sense of entitlement that it was their natural right to “blow off a little steam.” One person admitted that she was not having a good time until she became drunk. All of this was at considerable cost to the public, with increased police presence and tying up health-care services that could have been put to better use elsewhere.

In sharp contrast, we saw students in the U.S. amassed in orderly crowds, hearing from student survivors of February’s school shooting in Parkland, Fla., and urging politicians to pass tougher laws to fight gun violence. What was at stake for them was the very lives of young people. What was at stake for the revellers on Ezra Avenue was their right to self-indulgent rowdy behaviour. A stark contrasting picture indeed.

Maurice Martin New Hamburg