WVU TRADITION RETURNS TO MORGANTOWN - Burn Those Couches

(08/16/2005)
A West Virginia University tradition has already returned to the community as students return for the fall semester.

That's street fires - burning couches, chairs, tables, mattresses and sundry inflammables.

The celebrating revelers started fires on Grant "Burn Baby Burn" Avenue, in two separate incidents, with another favorite, dumpster burning.

Chief Investigator Ken Tennant says the Morgantown Fire Department extinguished 134 street fires in 2004 and 125 so far this year.

Sixty occurred in March following the WVU men's basketball team victory against Texas Tech and major loss a week later to the University of Louisville.

The university expelled eleven students and sanctioned five others in connection with those fires.

Bobby Roberts, WVU director of public safety and transportation, says the university is taking an aggressive approach to people setting fires by expelling students and having them face criminal charges.

But old traditions are hard to break, coupled with the ingestion of alcohol.