Crowd of 1,000 gathers to celebrate in Greektown
Students gather between the Gamma Phi Beta and Alpha Delta Pi Greek houses Sunday night to celebrate the death of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The celebration lasted into the early hours of Monday morning.
A crowd of about 1,000 people celebrated the killing of Al Queda leader Osama bin Laden on Sunday night and early Monday morning on the streets of Greektown. With flags and fireworks in hand, people concentrated between the Gamma Phi Beta and Alpha Delta Pi houses on Richmond Avenue.
The MU Police Department arrived on the scene at about 11:30 p.m., blocking off several streets in the vicinity but allowing the celebrations to continue. MUPD officers refused comment, referring reporters to MUPD Capt. Brian Weimer, who did not return calls for comment.
Alpha Chi Omega house mother Marilyn Rose Thudium, who rushed to join the celebration, compared the scene to the one she witnessed on Victory in Europe Day near the end of World War II.
"The minute (President Obama's) speech was over, I went outside," Thudium said. "I've never seen anything like this."
Freshman Brittany Dick cited the celebration as evidence that her generation cared about national security issues.
"Our generation gets a bad rap for not caring about these sorts of things, but this shows that we do," Dick said.
As of 12:30 a.m., the size of the crowd continued to grow. Stay with The Maneater for photos and more updates from the site of the celebration.
Comments (4)
12:59 p.m., May 2, 2011
Allen said:
It sure was a lot of fun but the celebration doesn't prove that we care about national security. The bros and hoes of Mizzou were just using this death as another excuse to extend their weekend one more drunken night.
7:44 a.m., May 2, 2011
Jonathan said:
The Freshman student is right. Unfortunately most college aged people do get a bad rap for their attitudes toward national security, as will be explained. I was glad to see the spontaneous patriotic demonstrations all across the nation over the killing of Osama Bin Laden by U.S. Armed Forces. I was particularly happy to see the celebrations on MU campus by patriotic students chanting U-S-A and so on. We are just waiting to see however how long it will take for the far left wing students and professors to come out with a demonstration protesting America's "arrogance" "imperialism" and "racist militaristic killing machine." But of course they will have to take their organization and marching orders from the University's many Ward Churchill like professors before that happens. You know, the ones who are enraged by any patriotic flag waving. But I do imagine the patriotic ones will tamp down any counter ones. They will just have to sit in their little discussion groups and brood.