Boorish. The word has several synonyms: rude,
ill-mannered, impolite, coarse, rough, loutish, uncouth, crude, ignorant, base,
and a few others that must be in the dictionary. Why is it lately that we seem to have a spike
in boorish behavior at sporting events?
Maybe I’ve been asleep during some Tar Heel events, but I just don’t
remember hearing fans engaging in boorish behavior as we heard at the last two
Tar Heel games. Booing our Chancellor
and our Governor when being introduced is just flat boorish, and all of those
other words I mentioned above. Nothing
wrong with having issues with someone or even having a strong dislike for them,
but it seems to me that we as fans attending a sporting event should be able to
display the kind of decorum that is associated with class. Sure, the booers were a small minority, but I
wonder what those potential recruits thought when they heard the booing last
Saturday. And I wonder what young people
in the Dean Dome learned as they heard some of their elders being
childish. Here we are in each case
honoring folks who really deserve it and yet the proponents of rudeness mar
it. There’s a school up the road that
has a bad rep because of the boorish behavior of their students during
basketball games. Do we want to be known
as the place where adults just aren’t?
PS: For those who will want to remind me that
people have the right to engage in boorish behavior and many other things, I
know that. I also know that everything
we have a right to do isn’t necessarily right to do.
