There's a Bloody Riot Goin' On

"Bloody" is a double entendre in this case, referring to the use of the word in Britain as a colloquial pejorative and the literal bloodiness of a riot of college students that took place yesterday in London. Tens of thousands of British students gathered outside Parliament to protest the coalition government's to triple the fee of annual college tuition, from £3000 (about $4800) to £9000 (about $14,000). Some students were so enraged at the idea of forking over nine thousand quid for a college education - a college education that had been free until 1997 - that they attacked the Conservative Party headquarters in a nearby office building, destroying windows and started a fire in the building's inner courtyard.

Who do these Brit kids think they are - French?

A lot of folks in America might find this astonishing. Higher education in the U.K. used to be free? Yes, because the Brits were able to afford it after giving up their empire, something we Yanks have been more than reluctant to do. And while today's British university students may be willing, however grudgingly, to pay the equivalent of nearly five thousand dollars for an education when they'd rather see tuitions abolished - a promise the Liberal Democrats have had to renege on since entering a coalition with the Tories - they're ticked off at seeing the fee increase threefold, and understandably so.

Understandably, at least, until you consider how much American colleges and universities charge for tuition. At Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey, tuition for state residents is already $9,926, and that's not counting the $2,634 in additional fees or the ten thousand or so for on-campus lodging. At New Jersey's Drew University, a private school and my alma mater, tuition - again, not counting fees or lodging - is $19,383 a semester.

Still, it's nice to see the normally passionless Brits get worked up enough to fight for what they believe in. No one organized rallies for health care reform in this country, and the new recommendations of the deficit reduction commission appointed by President Obama to change the inflation measurement used to make cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security payments and thus reduce benefits likely won't bring anyone to the Washington Mall. This is in spite of the fact that Social Security recipients are already seeing their check amounts stagante. In European countries, changes to public pensions and fees that would still leave their citizens better off then we are draw heated protest, while in this country, the public mostly shrugs at such proposals, whether they're implemented or not. Sure, there are a few rallies at public colleges and universities demonstrating against tuition hikes. But Americans mostly take such adversities lying down.

One thing we don't do anymore is start riots for social change. We tried that in the sixties; it didn't work. Look what happened to Detroit.