It didn't take me long to get down to Beaver Avenue last Friday night. I had just gotten back from The Bryce Jordan Center, and as I was walking towards my dorm, I heard the sounds of a crowd. A big crowd. An excited crowd. A riotous crowd.

I had to be there.

I quickly ran into my dorm room. "Greg!" I yelled to my roommate. "It's a riot!" Greg's face lit up as he leapt out of his chair and threw on a jacket. I popped into my neighbor's room. "Matt, we gotta get to the riot!"

And toward the riot the three of us walked. My roommate clutched his digital camera, ready to take pictures of the writhing masses of human stupidity, and I mentally prepared myself for what I was about to see.

Would there be fire? Would there be broken glass? Would there be storefronts exploding and police buzzing Beaver Canyon with helicopters that dropped tear gas on the crowds, causing us to all to slowly sink to our knees and cough up bile until the authorities had subjugated us?

I felt as though my morbid curiosity was justified. Not being a summer Penn State dweller, I had missed the two Arts Fest riots, and I'd be damned if I was going to miss what could be the premiere party conversation piece for the next couple weeks. Those first two riots had become such a part of our Penn State legacy, and I wasn't going to let my exposure to the next one be confined to second-hand anecdotes. I needed to observe it with my own two eyes. After all, We are. . . Penn State! We have. . . Ri-ots!

So as I stepped on Beaver Avenue at about 12:15 a.m. and gazed at the breathing sheet of people that extended as far down the avenue as my eyes would take me, I thought one word to myself — Dude.

This was it. Four thousand students, 90 cops, one canyon — I had finally stepped into a Penn State riot.

Less than 10 minutes later, police in riot gear had cleared the streets, students were clutching their faces in mace-induced pain, and the crowd was collectively chanting "Please don't mace us!"

But as my roommate and I (our third party member was swept away by the hungry crowd) wandered along Beaver, snapping pictures of the pacing storm troopers and the drunken kids with burning eyes, an unsettling feeling crept into my gut — this so-called "riot" did not match my preconceived notions of what constitutes an actual riot.

If this was a riot, shouldn't there be mass destruction of public and private property? Shouldn't there be flames licking the sky? Shouldn't there be at least a moderate amount of looting? Where were the obligatory overturned cars? And shouldn't there be more violence than just the cops pepper-spraying kids in the face? Who would actually consider this to be a riot?

Having now had almost a week to think about it and observe reactions from students, voices outside the university and the media, I realize now that what happened last Friday was not a riot. What happened last Friday was the perpetuation of a myth.

When the residents of Pennsylvania read their Saturday morning newspapers, and read that a riot had occurred the night before in State College, I'm sure that they didn't picture in their minds the images that I saw on Friday night. I saw a crowd of students — very few of them had it in their minds to destroy things — congregating in a rowdy, but not necessarily destructive, manner. Those who read about the riots surely pictured something much more explosive.

If the word "riot" is mentioned, people immediately picture city blocks being laid to rubble and an angry crowd, spurned on by some sort of injustice, illegally and violently letting out pent-up societal steam.

Upon hearing the word "riot," people think of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, during which 50 people were killed and more than a billion dollars' worth of damage was inflicted upon the city. They think of the 1943 "Zoot-Suit Riots," in which roving bands of Navy service men and groups of Mexican youths clashed for 10 days in the streets of L.A. Or they think of the 1970 "Hard Hat Riots," where hundreds of construction workers brutally attacked anti-war demonstrators on Wall Street.

Upon hearing the word "riot," people do not, however, picture thousands of students getting maced because a few jerks tore down a couple of street signs.

And so, as people from around the state and elsewhere picture images far worse than what actually occurred at Penn State last Friday, the myth of the violent Penn State riot spreads.

It was my own perception of this myth that fueled the morbid curiosity that compelled me to get to Beaver to observe the riots. In fact, most of the people in the crowd didn't want to commit any acts of violence, but just wanted to see if the myth of the violent Penn State riot was actually true.

When such a violent riot didn't occur, and all that did occur was cops macing the hell out of kids simply because they were in the street, we still collectively called what happened a "riot," and, thus, perpetuated the myth. And now, because of this myth, people believe that we as Penn State students are incapable of assembling in a way that does not have ultimately destructive ends.

The only thing that was laid to rubble in last week's "riot" was our collective reputation. And as long as the myth of the violent Penn State riot continues to be perpetuated, it will be impossible to begin the rebuilding process.