The Torching of Norway Field

Shame on America. How she has lost her manners in the last century! It's a good thing the French gave us the Statue of Liberty in 1886. Today, we might have melted down the Bartholdi-Eiffel masterpiece and tossed her into a scrap metals heap 10 days after dedication. That's how Americans treat gifts now.

To commemorate the start of the World Cup soccer tournament in America, the government of Norway gave an elaborate gift to Red Hook, an American neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Norway Field was a miniature soccer green with a high-performance artificial all-weather surface, which the Norwegian government wanted placed in an underprivileged neighborhood.

Their hope was three-fold: to give children there the opportunity to play soccer and to have a safe sport area which would help bind the community together; to give a precious new possession to a run-down area; and to lift people's spirits and their pride in the community. They were slapped in the face.

For the 10 days that Norway Field existed, it was a marvelous thing. Children organized soccer games to play, little girls practiced their dances and the supervisor of the park even told The New York Times that, "They'd [the children] take off their shoes." It seemed that the Norwegian government's hopes for the field had been achieved. Children only take off their shoes when they do not want to soil something precious to them.

Then, 10 days after its dedication in Red Hook, in daylight and with ghastly impudence, local youths set fire to the field and to the fence surrounding it. The Times reported that a "gaping hole was scared into the center." Within 48 hours the entire green was removed from the site and the ground was once again empty, vandal-proof and concrete.

An eyewitness to the event only had one comment for the Times: "Man, that thing was just too new for the projects. That's what happens to new things here."

What kind of mentality produces this sort of statement, that any new community good must be earmarked for inevitable destruction? Is it the same mentality that drives a child to come crashing into a field of newly-fallen snow, to be the first to make his mark on something pristine? If it is, the mentality is mistaken.

Destroying a soccer field is not like making snow angels. It is like smashing a golden ring into pieces with a sledge hammer. It is like spitting on a gift and throwing it back at the giver. It is mannerless.

Perhaps the local youths who destroyed Norway Field had more of a motive than getting a few cheap kicks. Perhaps they destroyed the field out of pride, taking the Norwegian gift as a scrap thrown at them from the hand of a wealthy man.

If this is the case, it is a sad day in America. Sad because children in underprivileged neighborhoods have been so thoroughly conditioned to defend their pride with knee-jerk reactions, that they do so even when an act is born not of pity, but of simple kindness. And a world where kindness cannot exist is nowhere to live.

The most likely and saddest explanation for the destruction of Norway Field is that the youths who destroyed it simply do not care for their home communities. By their actions, they show no stake or interest in protecting and treasuring those rare collective goods which their neighborhood acquires. The local vandals saw a delicate thing starting to grow in their neighborhood--something other children could make good use of--and they plucked it from the ground and burned it. They should be ashamed. If their own home is not valuable to them, what is?

In the aftermath of the torching of Norway Field, neighborhood parents rushed out and tried in vain to repair and cover the damage, lest the field be removed completely by the city. They were protecting their children from seeing their playground destroyed. It must have been a heart-wrenching scene, a scramble to pick up burnt pieces and to beg for something to remain in the community, even if it was charred and torn. Maybe then the vandals would allow it to stay.

The parents who tried to save the field are the only ones who see clearly, who treasure their homes, who have shame. But they strive against something much larger than they are, something which engulfs them and renders their actions all in vain.

This is to say nothing of the blatant insult we deal to Norway. The Norwegians are bewildered about an incident which has become all too common-place in America. What is even more alarming is that this sort of senseless vandalism is almost innately understood by Americans. It should not be.

A local sports organizer in Red Hook told the Times that, "some people call this a lost neighborhood." There are too many "lost neighborhoods" across the country. It is bad enough that America kills its own children on the streets where they play. Do we also have to slap a friendly country across the face for offering to help?

The Norwegian government is putting on a brave face over what must be pure disgust. The Acting Consul General in New York told the Times that. "It was the right idea and we tried it. It didn't have the chance to build a stable group of people who would use it and protect it. But we sent the right message: Sports is not only for the entertainment of rich adults. Sports is for the development of society," Some development.

Patrick S. Chung '96 is a Crimson editor who occasionally moonlights as Miss Manners. The Ascot III opens tonight.