A Days Never Wasted If Your Wasted All Day

Who knew such a fun day could end the way it did. It all started last Saturday, my friend had asked me if I would like to go with him to the Winona State homecoming football game.  The game was at 1, so I arrived at the field around 12:30. It was crazy, people everywhere, tailgate parties, people selling things, and lots of drunken students coming for a good day. I had a great day at the game with my friend, I even won a t-shirt, but unfortunately the Warriors still lost the game.

            It was funny because all through the day I kept hearing about how many parties there were, and how crazy it was downtown. I ran into this friend of my moms and he said he had gone for a drive downtown and said this is the worst he has seen the parties in a long time, people drinking and passed out all over along the roads.  It was kind of funny to hear about all the people that had been partying the night before and to hear other people at the game bragging about what time they woke up in the morning to start drinking, so they could be feeling good for the game. Then most of these students’ conversations quickly turned to where to go to party, and what was going down at these parties. I thought it was interesting how many people gave up in the game at half time and took off to go start partying and drinking again. But for me this day just seemed to come and go as another day.

            The following morning I went to work at 11. The lady that had been their prior to me had said she had heard shooting down by her house the night before, but she really didn’t know what was going on. She kept telling me how she thought that this year was one of the worse homecomings. She said people just got way to out of control. I told her then that if there was a shooting, I was sure we would read about it in the paper.

            Well just like I had guessed it was a headline on the front page. It said that there had been two men, the one confronted a group of people outside, hit someone over the head with an object. The residents then went into the house and closed the door. The man then smashed the window. There were two women outside and they began to argue with the man that had broken the window, then all of a sudden the man began firing shots, the two women dropped to the ground. The two men then ran from the scene. Both of the women had been shot, one in the leg and another in the abdomen, both were taken to the hospital, and were later said to be just fine. No names have been released of the victims, because they fear for their lives right now.

            These two men were first described as being black men, but new news from witnesses have released a new statement saying it is two white men now. It’s crazy how people always have a way to blame people of color. A few days later when I saw my co-worker, she said her husband and his friends were being talked to earlier in the week, and questioned, because her husband is a man from Kenya, and he is of color, and so are most of his friends. Police had upped security at the college and were doing more patrols in the area of the shooting.  I later informed my co-worker of the address of where this happened and she soon realized that it was in the house across from hers. She said that explained the red spray paint put out by police on the road. After talking about what happened she was just happy that she was not doing anything outside at the time of the shooting.

            Almost going on a week later, the police have yet to find the men involved in the shooting, they constantly have new news and information for us in the paper, but they are still yet to find them. This is kind of scary to think about because now there are two people that are being searched for for a shooting and they have yet to be found, this means they are out among people somewhere, and who know what they might do next.

            I truly do think that this year’s homecoming celebrations got quite a bit out of control. Between the alcohol, rowdiness, and shooting, these are all not good combinations for college students and I hope this wakes them up and makes them see the reality of the world for what it is.