Almost a year to the day after the Michigan weekend riots, a celebratory riot conference is being held at Ohio State. OSU was joined by the University of Minnesota and the U.S. Department of Justice in organizing the meeting.
“This is a week that marks an anniversary – an anniversary we’d like to forget,” said OSU President Karen A. Holbrook. “This year we have enjoyed a fairly incident-free season. We aren’t ready to celebrate yet. We still have one game.”
The two-day conference, which opened yesterday, is focusing university and city-government perspectives on celebratory riots and ways of preventing them from happening.
“This conference is about changing behavior and changing culture,” Holbrook said in her opening remarks.
“By no means was this violence unique at Ohio State or an issue related to post-game activity. Drunk and obnoxious activity are becoming as much of a tradition as tailgating,” she said.
Binge drinking was largely attributed to being the main reason for riotous behavior across the country.
“Alcohol is recognized as the fuel for this behavior; the single biggest drug problem on campuses,” said Kermit L. Hall, president of Utah State University.
Both Holbrook and Bill Hall, vice president of Student Affairs at OSU, agreed that alcohol is to blame.
Most conference speakers reported that a heightened police presence and enhanced community involvement have helped immensely in curbing riotous behavior. But the threat of student discipline also surfaced.
“Although hundreds participate in riots, the actual number of students who go through the judicial process is in the teens,” said Tracy Smith, director of Student Judicial Affairs at the University of Minnesota. “Does the idea of possible disciplinary action even enter into their heads while they are rioting?”
Finding those responsible and finding ways to deter students from rioting is important, she said.
“We have similar goals of trying to curb these behaviors,” said Kathryn Brown, vice president of the University of Minnesota. “We refer to these as student riots, but many of those coming to campus are not our students.”
Louis Muhn, chief of police for East Lansing, Michigan, spoke on his experiences on stopping the riots from happening in the first place.
“Instead of waiting for the crowd to reach the thousands, we have been dispersing the crowd while it is still small,” Muhn said.
The conference featured videos of past off-campus disturbances, some leading up to the conference itself, including before-and-after shots of Lane Avenue and Tuttle Parking Garage on Michigan game day last year.
“We have been receiving debriefings,” Holbrook said. “We have videos following all of the games this year. We are looking at the videos to see what can be done to improve our response to off-campus disturbances. Its an ongoing process.”
Cat Clark, student body vice president at the University of New Hampshire, said she thinks it will take baby steps to see results.
“Students know that riots won’t be solved overnight,” she said. “The work we are doing now may not be seen for many years. Student leaders have made it clear that riots are the hardest thing to deal with.”
The role of faculty in the process to stop off-campus disturbances is important as well, said Janet Lillie, assistant dean for undergraduate education, in the College of Communication Art and Sciences at Michigan State University. She said students feeling bored leads to the problem of spectator crowds.
“One of the things the students said was that they didn’t have enough to do. If we raise the bar of academics we might inadvertently raise the degree of responsibility, ” Lillie said.
She also said she was concerned for the students’ attitude towards rioting.
“When I asked a class of mine about how they feel about the riots, eight of my students said they feel they have the right to riot,” Lillie said. “And this was in a classroom, not a tailgating party.”
Overall, prevention seemed to be the theme of the conference. Hall said that although the problem hasn’t been solved, he feels a difference is being made.
