A few weeks ago, as I received my glorious e-mail from current University Athletic Director Bill Moos regarding just how courteous, affable and well-mannered Oregon Duck football fans have become, I chuckled. I thought to myself, “Bill, maybe you need to take a stroll through our now mystique-defunct stadium during each home game and in the parking lots after those games, so that you can see some of these well-mannered and courteous fans.”
In the six-plus years that my family and I have been a part of section 36, never have we been subjected to the kind of violent attitudes and behaviors as we have been forced to endure through the first few home games of the 2004 season.
As a young boy in the early ’90s, it was a great feeling to be able to sit in those stands and watch future gridiron greats, Ducks or otherwise, and know that the people who adorned that then-half-empty stadium were there to do the same thing as we were; join as one, watch football and have a great time.
But within the opening quarter of the Indiana game, the Eugene Police Department had to make three separate appearances within the first five minutes of the game due to violent, belligerent and obnoxious individuals starting altercations with their own fellow Duck brethren. Where’s the love?
To the arrogant, uneducated group of egotistical drunk University frat boys that chose to brand my stepfather as a nigger as he tried to walk back to his vehicle, if you were to stay awake in class more often you’d realize that because a man’s skin color may be dark, that doesn’t automatically make him an African-American. He’s of Samoan-American heritage, and luckily he’s also a man of class, or you’d probably be finding yourself bedridden.
So Mr. Moos, look in that newly expanded section the next time the defense is calling for the crowd to stand and become rowdy. I bet you can count on two hands how many actually stand and cheer loudly.
My family and I will always be a few of the many loyal, well-mannered and courteous fans that will support the Ducks, win or lose, and I hope than when my family and I sit in our seats in the future, there will be more of the same faithful, well-mannered and courteous fans surrounding us that I was used to being surrounded by when this whole joyride began back in ’94.

Justin Gast is a senior in the School
of Journalism and Communication