Reprehensible actions have become commonplace

	Alcohol plays a large role in poor behavior displayed by fans at sporting events. Doug Benc/Getty Images

Different college students spend their time in different ways. Some study, some go to parties, some yell racist taunts at the opposing hockey team.

In fact, so many Boston University students spend their time that way that the school's administration felt the need to clean up the language at Terriers games. This week the school announced a new fan behavior policy that forbids swearing, along with racist and sexist comments.

Does anyone else find this alarming? Not alarming that they're banning such behavior -- alarming that they actually need to. I'm all for heckling the other team (in fact, last summer some friends and I spent an entire Phillies game loudly mocking David Bell's curly mullet). But it's 2006, people. A highly respected university in one of the most liberal cities in America should not have to tell its students to stop yelling racist and sexist things. What else do we need to tell today's college students -- that the Holocaust was a bad idea?

The offensive language "is something that is kind of a deep cultural issue among the students, which is kind of a sign of rebelling against the administration," university president Robert Brown said by way of explanation in an August media interview. See, that's the administration's problem. By not being vulgar, racist or sexist themselves, they're practically begging rebellious students to be obscene and hateful just to show that they can.

BU athletic director Mike Lynch told reporters that he has faith in the student body's cheering ability. "I think they can come up with something more clever than 'F you.'"

Incredibly, Lynch is wrong. Several students are up in arms over the new rules.

"That's terrible and an infringement on our freedom of speech," a BU sophomoron told The Boston Globe. "Sports won't be fun anymore." Yeah, if you can't be a racist, sexist jackass, what's the point of even watching the game?

Another student said that the new rules are unenforceable because the entire student section would get ejected. Maybe these poor, unfairly treated students should stage a revolution. I can picture it now: To warn each other when the policy's uptight enforcers are on their way over, students will run through the streets of Boston screaming, "The skittish are coming! The skittish are coming!" I understand the city has a rich history of standing up for freedom, but is the freedom to hurl curses and racial epithets at visiting collegiate athletes really one worth fighting for? What's their slogan going to be, "no taxation without discrimination"?

Of course, BU is not the only organization with obnoxious fans. The University of Wisconsin has its own campaign to stop its students from being abusive to visiting fans. UW students opposed to the new behavioral guidelines countered with the argument: "Helloooo, the team is called the Badgers. We're badgering. Duh." UW's niceness campaign is dubbed "Rolling Out the Red Carpet," which they apparently named after the way the Badgers' offensive line treated the Western Illinois defense on Saturday.

So how's the Red Carpet thing working for them? The initiative's official Web site features a letter from a visiting fan, part of which reads, "Your stadium traditions (with the exception of the profanity flying back and forth between the student sections) are FANTASTIC!" This letter mentions profanity flying back and forth and is still posted as an example of the kind of experience the school wants visitors to have.

And there's plenty more. Less than a year ago, Penn State officials apologized on behalf of their fans for terrorizing Ohio State's marching band. OSU, meanwhile, recently felt the need to implement a new behavior policy of its own, but Buckeyes fans still set a few dozen fires throughout Columbus after the football team's big win this past weekend. I know I've been out of college for a while, but it seems to me that using racial and sexist taunts, assaulting people from a rival school and setting fires should be pretty clear no-nos.

Meanwhile, in the pros, basketball and baseball have both had ugly fan-player incidents in recent years. And the Cincinnati Bengals recently rolled out 381-JERK, a hotline that fans can call if someone sitting near them at the game is a little too drunk or belligerent. (Don't bother joking about a separate hotline for reporting the Bengals players -- there's already one set up, and the number is 9-1-1.)

But bad behavior in the pros doesn't seem to be as widespread as it is on campuses. If some of these student-fans spent a little less time attending games and a little more time in the school's Communications department, maybe the days of such boorish behavior would be numbered. But I'm putting 381-JERK on my speed dial, just in case.

Adam Hofstetter's column appears every Wednesday on SI.com. You can e-mail him at ahofstetter@gmail.com, but only if you can come up with something more clever than "F you."

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