August
23, 2004: State Fair "Cool It Down" Doomed to Fail
By Ahchie
The
California State Fair launched a new “Cool It Down” campaign this
year, attributed to community leaders and State Fair officials. They want
“young people to understand it’s a new way of life at the Fair.”
While the goal of making the fair experience as family friendly as possible
may be a noble one, this course of action is doomed to fail from the start.
There is no chance to succeed when your target audience is first not listening,
and second doesn’t care. The effort to make them listen to the message
and care about “cooling it down” will only appeal to the young
people who are not currently the problem.
Here are the ways the “Cool It Down” people want to get the attention of trouble makers:
Without specifically mentioning any particular group of people, they have indicated who their real target audience is with their “hip-hop clothing” reference, and have unwittingly revealed their own pre-determined notion of how that segment of society can be expected to behave in a social setting. While a high percentage of the trouble makers at the Fair may indeed be profiled as hip-hop clothing wearers, their anemic efforts to get their attention are an indication of how they totally misunderstand the very people they want to “Cool It Down.”
The end result will be the same behavior as before, coupled with an early closing of 9 PM on Saturday, September 4th. The message sent by closing the fair early is that the way to “Cool It Down” is to close up shop, send the nice families home, and send the trouble-making youths on their way to find someone else to terrorize on their Saturday night on the town.
Do these “community leaders” and State Fair officials really think they are onto something good here? Any trouble making youth that falls for this is sure to be ridiculed into nothing by his or her fellow trouble makers, who by definition do not go for this type of campaign. The only ones who would actually participate are not the problem type person that this campaign is aimed at.
The bigger question is: why do people feel that we need to start rewarding people for behaving in a way they should be expected to behave in the first place? That is like giving a car thief a prize for not stealing cars. If you can refrain from stealing a car this week, we’ll give you this cool sports bottle. This mentality could be applied to many aspects of behavior. Like if you open the door for five old ladies in one day, we’ll give you a key-chain light up pen that reads, “I dig old ladies.” Or if you resist the urge to sell crack to anyone under the age of 12 for one full week, we’ll give you a pair of fuzzy dice to hang from your rear view mirror. Or if you promise to eat something good for you every day for a month, we’ll give you an iron on patch to put on your backpack that says, “I’m eatin’ good and I’m an idiot because I need prizes to get me to do what I should be doin’ anyway.” We all know that we should not be stealing cars, that we should open doors for old ladies, that we should not sell crack, especially to anyone under the age of 12, and that we should eat something good for us every day. The point is that we should not expect that we will get a reward for doing or not doing those things.
The reasoning for closing the Fair early on September 4th is due to last year’s Fair when “unruly behavior broke out in front of the Main Gate of Cal Expo, with a small population of unsupervised young people refusing to leave the grounds.” So what did they do to respond? They formed the Task Force of Stakeholders, which “met several times to dissect the problem and debate solutions proposed by members of the community at forums held in January.” From the ideas, the Task Force “came to an agreement that the idea that held the most promise would be closing the Fair early on September 4, 2004.”
These people have to be insane thinking that this is the way to solve a behavior problem. What they have done with this decision is to allow a small group of people to dictate what goes on at the Fair. Because of this small group, the many people who attend the fair and behave properly are in essence punished by having to leave early, while the people who misbehaved will be rewarded with prizes if they can control themselves this year. The group of trouble makers are given the power here because the officials involved are too weak-kneed to do anything to truly solve the problem. Whatever happened to punishing people for wrong behavior? The answer to the rowdy trouble making youths terrorizing the Fair is to crack down on them and crack down hard. Make it clear that bad behavior will not be tolerated. Make it clear that they are expected to behave or there will be consequences. If the boundaries are made clear and those boundaries are consistently enforced, the bad behavior will eventually stop. Rather than discourage bad behavior, the current course of action will do nothing more than show that the Fair is at the mercy of the unruly.
return to top | return to news