School days: the best days of your life. Those salad days when life was easy, when you would chase girls who didn't want to date you -- and when, during a basketball game, your locker room would be painted with shit and piss. Well, that's what certain members of the Oakdale High Mustangs of Manteca, CA, will tell their grandkids after last Wednesday's away game at nearby East Union High. According to James Burns of the
Manteca Bulletin, one of the coaches discovered that "the visitors' locker room had been
sprayed with urine and smeared with feces -- a familiar mark in this recent rash of vandalism."
Recent rash? Indeed. According to the paper, there has been at least one other such occurrence in that school district: a bus used to transport cheerleaders from Weston Ranch High to an event at Oakdale was "broken into and doused in" enough urine to fill "two milk jug containers." That incident was allegedly perpetrated by students from Oakdale High.
And because of that incident, it appears that Oakdale is being blamed for turd-terrorizing their own locker room.
Burns accuses the Oakdale student body of "having a penchant for vandalism" because Oakdale's assumed culpability in the bus incident. He therefore concludes they must have defiled their own locker room at the host school. Elementary!
Elementary, rather like Mr. Burns's deductive skills. How could Oakdale have carried it out? After all, they were probably playing basketball at the time of the crime. Surely it would be damn near impossible to pull that off. Doesn't make any sense, does it? Talk about shitting on your own doorstep!
Burns's article is a typical example the media's inclination towards summary justice. It's unwise to say that two incidents make a pattern. Wait for a couple more acts of vandalism to occur, and then you might have a pattern emerging -- and only then would you be able to state with any credibility that Oakdale kids are hell-bent on fecal sabotage. Point the accusing finger when you know what you're talking about, sir!
It seems to me that students at East Union High most likely did the dirty deed -- perhaps as revenge for what Oakdale did to Weston Ranch's bus, but perhaps just because kids are jerks.
Because of the poop horror, Oakdale wasn't allowed in their locker room at halftime. Milling about in the hallway during the lull, they engaged in a "scuffle" with East Union fans. The police were called to escort the visitors out of town. All in all, it wasn't the best of days for any of the parties concerned -- but especially Oakdale, who lost 56-46, thus carrying the stain of defeat as well as that of shit and suspicion.
