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.

Related Stories
‹
Talk Derby To Me
My favorite spring sporting event has to be the Kentucky Derby.  What stands out most during this historic horse race is difficult to decide…the sleek and athletic thoroughbreds, the diminutive yet wiry jockeys in their colorful silks, the thrill of the race itself or the chance for a long-shot filly to come from behind and […]
Parenting Page: It Takes a Village - Of Perspectives
This is a parenting page, about parenting Page. I am a child psychologist and a mother. So I specialize in children, yet I am human, thus I am full of knowledge and yet as full of emotions as any other parent. So I decided to write this Parenting Page since it might be informative and […]
Cabaret at PlayMakers
The crowd laughs, but […]
Political Power Grabs in 1875 and 2013
Republican Party. We need more moderate voices.” One of my longtime friends was tempting me, noting that his political party was in charge now. If I wanted to participate in the new regime in North Carolina, I should change my registration. “And,” he said, “we could use some […]
TABLE Celebrates its 5th Birthday
TABLE celebrated its 5th birthday with children of the South Estes Family Resource Center with a delicious and healthy carrot cake — made with carrots, whole grain flower, white flour and cream cheese icing. TABLE is a nonprofit providing hunger relief to at-risk kids in the Chapel Hill Carrboro area. They will be celebrating their […]
Sleep On It
Some mornings I wake up, check Twitter, and see the following: “The struggle is live today” or “I’m captain of the struggle bus this morning.” Did you ever think about what is the cause of the struggle? I’ll tell you: insufficient sleep. College students are probably the worst offenders when it comes to not getting […]
A Dangerous Eight Seed
Anyone who was channel surfing last Sunday had to stop and marvel at the Carolina-Miami game and how great that first half was. Even if they didn’t know the teams. That’s how good, and at such a high level, the ACC championship game was played. Both teams scored better than a point per possession, shooting […]
Light Sensitive at Nasher
Immediately upon entering the exhibit, one is greeted by images at once recognizable and disorienting. The photographs in “Light Sensitive” are not merely beautifully captured or distilled moments in time. Rather, they are hyper-consciously manufactured artistic works. In this exhibit the idea of photography as an unbiased portal into reality interacts powerfully with the more […]
The Luck of the Draw
Roy Williams wasn’t thrilled with the ACC's NCAA Tournament draw on Sunday night.
ACCT 2013: This Matters.
Who would say this tournament doesn’t matter? Try finding someone in the Greensboro Coliseum on Saturday afternoon who would tell you this is all just a big “cocktail party.” Not only was Saturday’s content potentially Maryland’s last ACC game ever, but every member of this particular UNC team was fighting to win their first tournament—of […]
›