Princeton University officials have threatened to take "serious disciplinary action" against Tiger undergraduates who lost their identification cards or were arrested during a two-and-a-half-hour riot which ended early yesterday morning.
An estimated 1500 students took part in the spontaneous riot, described as the worst at Princeton in the last ten years. Borough police arrested 14 and charged them with "participation in riotous behavior and damage to property not their own." Damage to University and local property may run to several thousands of dollars.
Goheen Condemns Students
Princeton president Robert F. Goheen condemned the disturbance as a "shocking display of individual and collective hooliganism," the Daily Princetonian reported. "As a surrender to raw, mass impulse," Goheen said, "and as an occasion for mob violence, any riot is reprehensible." Officials have indicated that several students may be expelled.
The riot began when a small group of students sounded aloud siren and played on a bugle and bagpipes. Other undergraduates streamed out of their dorms, seizing toilet paper to throw about the campus; several student set off fire works.
PRR Tracks Set on Fire
Rioting undergraduates set a fire on tracks of a spur of the Pennsylvania railroad, halting further service on the line that night. Eight railroad ties and two cars of the Princeton junction were damaged. Crews from the city of Princeton worked throughout the early hours yesterday morning to clean up litter strewn on the streets. Students got the litter from large trash cans lining several streets as part of the town's current clean-up campaign.
A fence was torn down around President Goheen's residence, an on-campus estate called "Prospect," and his flower beds were trampled. New Jersey state troopers were called in to join local police in quelling the riot.
Three Princeton police officers lost their caps in the scuffle, Thirty-six Tigers lost their identification cards.
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