It has become common to spot large groups of college-age kids bar hopping in Center City. You see them everywhere: on Samson Street, Market, Lombard, South Street. It seems as if entire college classes have agreed to go out on the town. Fishtown and Northern Liberties have their own roving nocturnal groups, as people pour out of the El stop and Front and Girard on weekends to hit the hot spots along East Girard, Frankford Avenue and 2nd Street.  

Sometimes these caravans become rowdy when excessive alcohol is involved. Beer fueled rowdiness is like a fever, especially if the group is all male. It builds and builds as consumption accelerates. A similar synthesis can happen in mixed male and female groups, as the recent Center City gay bashing case at 16th and Chancellor Streets demonstrates.

Kathryn Knott, an Archbishop Wood graduate, was out with male friends at a birthday party at a place called La Viola. The three hour party included a lot of drinking, although Knott would later say that she nursed one glass of wine for those three hours. When the group left the party, they encountered Zachary Hesse and Andrew Haught, a gay couple. One of the men in Knott’s group asked Hesse, “Is that your boyfriend?” When Hesse said yes, the group attacked both men. Hesse received two black eyes while his friend wound up with two broken cheekbones.  

Knott, as the group’s sideline ‘attack cheerleader,’ was no innocent bystander. Her good Catholic education at Archbishop Wood apparently did not cause her to call for peace or restraint. Witnesses instead say that she went helter skelter and threw a few punches herself, aside from calling the men a lot of names. Knott was later convicted of a number of misdemeanors in the attack on the couple. The case made international headlines and demonstrates the ugly power of drunken group non-think when it comes to losing control.   

I first became aware of drunken group non-think while growing up in Chester County. In those days, The Daily Local News of West Chester would often report cases of drunk and out of control teenage boys from the local Catholic high school going around in cars and smashing the mailboxes in front of suburban homes.

In another incident, drunken teens in groups attacked construction sites, jump started a number of parked five ton bulldozers and then drove them into deep pits.

Drunken group non-think is also an international problem. When in Stockholm on a press trip a decade ago, our group stayed at a large downtown hotel. At that time the hotel was hosting a military school graduation ball where men and women aged 18 and 19 paraded in ceremonial honor, dined then danced the night away.

After the official event, hundreds of drunken cadets and their dates roamed the hotel corridors trying to find their rooms. Many had lost their keys or forgotten their room numbers. The celebratory behavior continued until the wee hours. On the way to breakfast the next morning, the hotel hallway on my floor was littered with empty vodka and gin bottles. 

A slightly different group non-think pattern emerged at this year’s Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations.  

I’m thinking of the case of Colin McGovern, 24, a graduate of Council Rock High School, which is a wealthy suburban school. The Council Rock area is a land of split level homes, small mini-mansions, golf courses, and old stone tavern restaurants with names like George Washington Inn and General Gettysburg’s Retreat. Growing up in a place like this is not like growing up in the gritty city. The suburbs are generally a more protected environment where the homeless are invisible and where the likelihood of meeting someone with a knife isn’t as great as it would be in the city.    

McGovern, who lived in Bucks County, was out celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day with friends, two women and a male, when the group decided to hop in a cab and head up to Rittenhouse Square to try to find a hotel to spend the night. It was 3 AM — the so-called Hour of the Wolf — when more sensible people are in bed dreaming their third or fourth dream of the night. Searching the Square for a hotel may reflect the group’s affluence since this area is not for the moneyless.

By this time, I’m sure the foursome had consumed a lot of alcohol. News stories tells us that they alighted from the cab at Rittenhouse, near 19th Street and Manning. Then McGovern, allegedly, saw a man with a prosthetic leg wearing a red New Jersey Devil’s hockey cap. The man, Steven Simminger, was alone and quite possibly one of few people walking near the Square at that hour. At this point the foursome might have felt a sense of group empowerment.

McGovern then said something critical about Simminger’s choice in cap. Perhaps to McGovern it seemed like a small verbal arrow that he thought the man would just ignore. We’ll never know if McGovern’s group laughed as the comment was made. The news stories so far have not reported much on the other people in McGovern’s party. What we do know is that Simminger did not take the high road. He said something back.

This is where being 24 has its disadvantages. Most suburban kids coming into the city to party might assume that:

1. There’s safety in numbers. My group is bigger than yours. You are only one or two people, so therefore my group can do anything to yours — and win.
2. If you are only one person up against our big group then of course you have only one choice: walk away.
3. Overall, there’s much less danger of retaliation if the target of a “funny” (or snarky) comment is an urban misfit-type.   
4. Rittenhouse Square, or any park in Center City, is like any quaint little park in Doylestown.

Simminger, of course, said something back to McGovern, and the two men got into a fight. McGovern, the reports say, was on top of Simmeteler, which leads me to ask, did Simminger feel that his life was threatened at that point? Simminger stabbed the 24 year old, got up, and ran down Manning Street. The rest of the story is truly tragic. McGovern, a popular football player when in high school, lost consciousness as he bled in the arms of a stranger who came up to hold him and tell him that things would be okay. But of course it was not okay. McGovern died shortly after at Hahnemann Hospital. Simminger was later found and arrested.

The moral here is simple: Don’t shout out insulting things to strangers because you’re feeling brave and ballsy while out drinking with your buddies. People who go off the deep end at the slightest provocation come in many forms and may appear weak and defenseless — at first. They may resemble Laurel and Hardy, Pee Wee Herman, or even the Flying Nun, but looks are deceiving.

I am not saying that this tragedy was McGovern’s fault. On the other hand, this young man would still be alive if he had only buttoned his lips and kept the hat comment to himself.