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I've lived in two college towns where there was a small percentage of arrogant idiots, often connected with the fraternity systems. I'm not sure what causes this...it could be that there were always young men who regarded drinking, vomiting, vandalism, littering and verbal abuse as their birthright. But I think it has been made much worse by several things.
One is our fascination with being young. At one time young men who went to college aped their elders, donning tweed jackets and calling themselves "college men." Today you can see people in their late 20s around the campus dressed like children playing in the backyard, slouching across campus with their skateboards under one arm. Agreed, the skateboarders may not be the vandals, but they aren't stabilizing influences either.
Another is the advent of the protective parent. When a University of Florida student was arrested on charges of hiring a hooker for public sex at a frat party, his mother's reaction to a reporter was "We love our son and we're proud of him." There are a lot of baby boomer parents who never taught their kids discipline. The parents of the high-school "Spur Posse" of bys who used girls as targets of sexual conquests a few years ago had similarly benign reactions.
In the 1960s the belief that "you can't fight city hall!" gave way as people did fight city hall to try to bring an end to discriminatory laws, pollution, police abuses and corruption. But along the way some people adopted a belief that when you are in trouble, there's always a way out. I've noticed that it often involves parents hiring an attorney to run up to the college town to get their son off the hook.
Law enforcement officials are sometimes lax in prosecuting young thugs. When a group of fraternity boys gang-raped a 17-year-old girl at a "Little Sister Rush," the prosecuting attorney dropped the charges after a hired defense attorney met with hiom to tell him that they were really just a bunch of nice guys.
Some of these young guys, like the student peeing on the faculty member's house, have no idea that what they are doing is "wrong." A few years ago at the University of Florida a fraternity boy had a breakup with his girlfriend, and decided to get the pet cat back from her apartment. His approach was that a gang of fraternity boys went to her place and kicked in the door. It escaped them that this was breaking and entering, or home invasion.
