Christiana Mall Begins Their Opression
Last night, Christiana Mall began their policy to keep unaccompanied teenagers out of the mall on Fridays and Saturdays. CBS3 reported on it. The mall is making the accompanied youth wear a red wristband. I guess the yellow armbands were too controversial.
Apparently, the teenagers have started a Facebook group called The official boycott of the Christiana Mall. I don’t Facebook, so if anyone can check it out, I’d appreciate it.
Interestingly, WDEL’s coverage of the policy yesterday stated that mall employees were mostly in favor of the policy, which actually contradicts my findings from two weeks ago. I wonder if they are just taking Mall Managements word for it.
The official facebook boycott group has 945 members as of when I’m writing this.
There is also another group that doesn’t necessarily encourage a boycott but is just called “Everyone pissed about this new curfew at Christiana Mall” – that one has 197 members.
There’s also a couple smaller boycott groups – people who couldn’t find or didn’t like the main group so they decided to make their own?
Finally, there are also two groups in favor of the new mall policy:
“Official Group: Keep Annoying Teenie Boppers out of the Christiana Mall” – 10 members
“Show your support for adult supervised teens at Christiana Mall” – 14 members
Interestingly enough, the creator of the “show your support” group is a 28 year old woman from Wilmington. I can’t see an age on the creator of the “annoying teenie boppers” group, but from his picture and the fact that he’s listed as “Delaware Tech ’07 ,” he can’t possibly be over 30.
It would appear that some of my fellow 20- somethings (I’m 27 if you care) have forgotten how little there really was to do in DE before you could get into bars.
“OPPRESSION”!!!! Try liberation–now we can get the real business of shopping done without navigating the throngs of adolescent antics. Even my own teens say “good riddance”–in teen terms of course. The “crowd” gives a bad rep for all teens today….
So teens – save your wristbands, and when (if) you come back to the mall during the week, bring your purchase up to the counter, drop your wristband on the pile, and walk out.
Adults – demand and wear the wristband.
If the young people can expand their group(s) and extend its life through the holiday shopping season (Black Friday thru Jan.’09) mall merchants may be singing a different tune.
I don’t agree with the policy but it is not “oppression.” The mall is private property and they can set their own policy.
I think I’ll go to the mall Friday night to celebrate. 🙂
For the record, I don’t really care much about the policy because I almost never go to the mall anyway – and on the rare occasion I do it’s typically not during the time that the hordes of goth kids were hanging out anyway.
I just find it funny that this policy was spurred by some sort of irrational fear of the goth kids. I never got that. If anything I found them profoundly amusing from a sort of nostalgic point of view.
Not that you could have ever considered me a goth, but I did have purple hair at one point and did play guitar for a while in a sort of “goth band” (although I blatantly refused to wear makeup like the rest of them because I just thought it was stupid). Granted, that was during my undergrad years at UD – since I went to Sallies dyed hair wasn’t really a high school option (unless I wanted to get kicked out of school in which case my parents would have kicked the crap out of me).
At any rate, I agree it’s perfectly within the mall’s right to do this – I guess I just have a soft spot in my heart for the “poor misunderstood” goth kids. They try so hard to be “different” and all end up just looking the same. I find it more endearing than scary, but that’s just me.
My point all along has been that the mall is discriminating against a class of people, rather than addressing the issue. If they actually put some effort into enforcement of conduct policies they could clean up the mall without discriminating.
If they had decided that too many Mexicans were hanging out at the mall on Tuesdays, could they ban Mexicans? How about African-Americans?
“If they had decided that too many Mexicans were hanging out at the mall on Tuesdays, could they ban Mexicans? How about African-Americans?”
No, because banning a racial minorities is unconstitutional since they’re considered “suspect classes.”
enforcement of conduct policies
Which I think is why they want the minors to be accompanied by their parents, yes?
As far as I can tell, they are not banning the young ones because they are young, but because some representative group of them are misbehaving. They are not being discriminated against because they are young.
I don’t have a dog in this fight — I was not allowed to hang at the mall and nor do I understand the appeal of being at the mall on Friday night. So I’ve never been to Christiana on Friday or Saturday evening to know what is going on. But asking the young ones to be accompanied by their parents on Friday and Saturday night seems a fairly elegant way of pushing the issue pretty firmly back on the people who should be handling it — parents.
New Policy. All Mall Walkers must be accompanied by one of their children. The Mall Walkers can be rude, don’t spend money, and sometime, they can be a bit cranky. 🙂 Even at the old age of 47, I can still remember what is was like to be a teenager. Although I don’t do ANY shopping at the malls, I’m hoping the Mall loses business because of this
What happened to the work houses for children of the 19th Century? A good 12 hours labor on 900 calories a day should pretty much solve any youthful exhuberance problems.
A mall is private property erected for one purpose: to support a venue for commerce where purchasers can move about unimpeded by adolescents who feel that it is their playground.
I suspect that the restrictions being imposed are not going to be arbitrarily enforced but will be used to exclude those who fully deserve the term ‘mall rat’.
After the youth and their parents had accepted the armbands, they came for the elderly. Took their driving priveleges, made them report to senior centers with their middle-aged children supervising them. Still, I did nothing, for I was not elderly and my parents had passed. Alas…..
Bravo, EK. Right you are.
Art, no. The are being imposed arbitrarily. I fully agree that the actual rats should be evicted. The peaceful, quiet shoppers of all ages should be permitted free passage. The mall is just being cheap.
Except it wasn’t just a few rats. It was an infestation. How many police should the mall really be expected to fund in order to keep order? Again, it’s private property.
Malls and retail establishments are already having enough trouble in this economy. How much of a hit do you expect them to take just so the poor kids have someplace to hang out? Have you tried to look at this from the business owners’ point of view?
Yes, as I said, many of the employees had the same take that I did. In fact, the only security guard that would give me the time of day said he didn’t see a need for the restriction.
“it’s private property.”
Dominique is absolutely right. As I said before if they’re not banning a “suspect class” from the mall then they’ve done nothing wrong. Their property their rules.
That doesn’t mean I agree with the policy. I think it’s stupid and unnecessary, but I think they’re within their rights to implement it.
Geek –
I wonder why the mall would take such a drastic measure. I mean, if these kids were not intimidating in any way it would stand to reason that the merchants wouldn’t have suffered any losses at all. If the merchants weren’t suffering any losses, why would the mall want to risk any bad publicity by restricting a group of potential customers?
My guess is that the merchants and the customers complained to the mall. I would imagine the expense goes beyond just paying for security guards and police presence. I’m pretty sure the mall also has to carry liability insurance that I would guess is impacted with every report of criminal mischief. So, how much expense do you think a private enterprise should have to incur in order to be viewed as ‘fair’ by everyone? Again, try to take a look at this from a business owner’s point of view.
“I wonder why the mall would take such a drastic measure. I mean, if these kids were not intimidating in any way it would stand to reason that the merchants wouldn’t have suffered any losses at all. If the merchants weren’t suffering any losses, why would the mall want to risk any bad publicity by restricting a group of potential customers?”
Ad populum.
J – bonus points for refuting Dom while at the same time using words that will annoy the hell out of her.
Jargon dork.
Well I’m 16 years old and I work at the mall. If I’m old enough to work there and spend five hours working on a Friday or a Saturday night, why aren’t I old enough to go to the mall and shop on a Friday or Saturday that I’m off?
I used to go to the mall every Friday. I never really saw any fights there- except ones that were caused by college kids. The mall security harassed my friends over and over again, but one night I was outside getting harassed by a group of older men. They must have been over 35 or 40 and they were pretty much sexually harassing my 13 year old friend and I. She asked them to stop, but they just got their girlfriends to threaten us. Where the hell was mall security then!? Cruising the parking lots to look for more minors to harass.
I had to call the police that night.
If anything, kick the bad ones out. What am I going to do with my Friday nights now!? Underage drinking and drug use, hmmm.
One hallmark of a truly oppressive regime was a wall to keep people from escaping. So how does a mall that wants to keep some folks obviously bad for business out ‘oppressive’?
The ‘Berlin Wall’ was a rather deadly affair and crossings were dangerous and seemed to go only one way.
How many people are migrating to Cuba or Venezuela?
Perhaps ‘oppressive’ is in the context of this discussion is a word being misused by pampered adolescents being denied the use of what is not theirs.
Ummm. Yes, Art, that is the only possible description of oppression. Were not the African-Americans in Alabama trying to get into something? Oh, you know how to make a point my friend.