<p>let me say this. I think that the incident Thursday/Fri morning is one of the few examples of campus debate that is truly not about minor differences. In fact, the more people blog and forum (if I can use that as a verb) and discuss this, the more issues come out. Some of them are important. For example, is this the sort of police behavior ordinary townies have to endure on an everyday basis? If so, there's a problem here. And, it disturbs me (and, an increasing number of others) that it is townies <em>themselves</em> who think this is how the "real world" is and ought to be.</p>
<p>A lot of people at the Usdan campus meeting on Friday afternoon talked about creating a dialogue between Middletown and Wesleyan, and specifically between the MPD and students. One way to begin would be to not have poster saying things like "POLICE BRUTALITY IS THE NORM NOT THE EXCEPTION" hanging up in Usdan, when that clearly is not the case, even in light of recent events. Think about how many arrests are made in this country everyday- I'm guessing tens of thousands, not sure. I'm guessing that the reason MPD pretty much hates Wes students is not because they are generally privileged or wealthy (otherwise this would be a major problem at every elite institution in the US) but because of the strong, irrational "**** the police" type sentiment that exists on campus. Make no doubt about it: the offending officers at Fountain need to be dealt appropriate disciplinary action, because from what I've heard they acted way out of line. But how are you supposed to build a genuine relationship when you have such polarizing, inflammatory statements like that hanging in front of your university's doorstep?</p>
<p>Claire Potter said it best on Caterwauled: </p>
<p>As a blogger myself who has often been criticized for responses to things that are too quick and idiosyncratic, I don't want to come down too hard on you. But -- allowing for the fact that students were drunk and undoubtedly overreacted because of that -- that the police showed up with dogs, tasers and pepper spray in the first place is outrageous. Tasers are sometimes a lethal weapon, not a harmless crowd-control device. Pepper spray, if it gets in the eyes, can cause permanent damage. To be attacked and bitten by a dog is a terrifying and possibly life-changing experience. At its worst, the party was a noise nuisance: students were not trying to interfere with a function of government, nor were they doing anything more harmful than being a pain in the ass to some of their neighbors. Students did not deserve riot control tactics typical of Birmingham in the 1960's or the West Bank for acting as kids do when they are confronted by authority. While I wish our students had simply been compliant and not escalated the confrontation, not being deferential to unreasoning, violent authority should not make anyone -- Wesleyan students or Middletwon citizens -- subject to assault and battery by the police.</p>
<p>The Middletown Police response is a function of the ways law enforcement in general has been amped up in the past eight years by Homeland Security money, using a non-existent threat of domestic terrorism as an excuse. The MPD used this as an excuse to make an example of Wesleyan students -- nothing more, nothing less. And an argument that says the students deserved it because they didn't follow orders is just absurd. If your kid doesn't do what you say, do you have the moral -- much less the legal -- right to whip him?</p>
<p>There is tremendous resentment of Wesleyan in Middletown, something the university has been trying to address and needs to keep working on, and in this case, the MPD are the leading edge of that resentment. But there are two issues internal to Wesleyan that also need to be addressed: Wesleyan Public Safety's decision making here, and their possible grievances in terms of what they have to deal with all year (rudeness, aggression from students when they are trying to do their jobs) in relation to such events while also being available 24-7 to be cab drivers, open locked dorm doors, and transport students in various states of inebriation and disrepair; and the possible consequences of Wesleyan's policy of selling off its houses, which will bring private homeowners in Middletown into closer contact with student events like this one.</p>
<p>Claire Potter
Professor of History and American Studies
Wesleyan University</p>
<p>They fought the law and the law won. Go figure.</p>
<p>What exactly did a couple hundred college students think was going to happen when they started throwing beer bottles at police cars and policemen?</p>
<p>A couple hundred college students didn't start throwing beer bottles at police cars and policemen. Depending on the reports you read, somewhere between 0 and 3 people did.</p>
<p>The rest of the crowd of hundreds of college students - many on house porches, not on the streets - were shot with pepper spray guns anyway.</p>
<p>They fought the law and the law won. Go figure.<</p>
<br>
<p>Actually "the law", as you call it, did nothing of the kind. MPD made five arrests, then beat a hasty retreat. Possibly because there was no place to lock up 200 people. Or, possibly because there was nothing to charge them with. I dunno, you decide.</p>
<p>That was a disgraceful display by Wesleyan students, IMO. The contrast between the entitlement expressed by the students and the scorn for the students by the average commenter in Conn. is stunning.</p>
<p>Actually, I.D., after looking at several video clips, the most vivid overall impression I got was of how many people were there just snapping cell-phone pictures. Now, if you want to join the Coalition of the Stupid (of which we have seen and read much about this election year) you're welcome to. I for one, see a lot of serious issues here that have nothing to do with "the right to drink beer."</p>
<p>Not any more disgraceful than a Swarthmore student throwing a table over a balcony and hitting a fellow student on the head. People do stupid things when they're drunk, it's true. I think a table is more lethal than a bottle though. Table, bottle, both dumb.</p>
<p>The dynamic is also a little different at Wes where the city streets actually go through the campus. The campus is part of the city. Not like at places like Haverford or Swarthmore, which are basically enclosed park-like fortresses where their administrations can babysit students and protect them from the outside world. I guess that's why there's the student-on-student stupid acts of drunkeness.</p>
<p>And regarding the "scorn for students", Wes is surrounded by a working class city which is more of the real world than say, Haverford or Swarthmore, which, once you get past their gates, are surrounded by the Main Line and the Borough of Swarthmore, pretty much the demographic of a lot of their students. Not saying that's a bad thing, just pointing out that scorn and misunderstanding are more likely among different groups, not similar ones.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Not any more disgraceful than a Swarthmore student throwing a table over a balcony and hitting a fellow student on the head.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>No, that was pretty disgraceful, too. You didn't hear much defense of that kid. Being drunk is not an excuse.</p>
<p>I certainly would have been happy had he been pepper-sprayed and taser'd. He deserved it. As it was, he was permanently removed from the College as a result of a College Judicial Committee hearing.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Not like at places like Haverford or Swarthmore, which are basically enclosed park-like fortresses where their administrations can babysit students and protect them from the outside world.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I agree that issues with housing -- large concentrations of students in housing with no common space to congregate except in the street -- has contributed to the two Fountain Ave. riots in the last six years. I agree that the same party at Swarthmore (an annual senior class event) doesn't result in police action because it takes place in the large terraced courtyard that can accommodate hundreds and hundreds of students and is a third of a mile from the nearest house. If Wesleyan officials were smart, they would make the end-of-exams party a more organized affair and move it somewhere else on campus so that it doesn't have to take place on a public street.</p>
<p>I'm not sure I agree that Swarthmore's administration "protects" the students from the outside world. Swarthmore town police cruisers sit outside the main party venues on Swarthmore's campus on weekend nights and have made drunk 'n disorderly arrrests...arrests that have been entirely warranted and send an important message, IMO.</p>
<p>BTW, the first big mistake the Wes students made Thurs night was not dispersing when campus security asked nicely and patiently over a period of time before calling in the Middletown police.</p>
<p>The second big mistake was greeting the first Middletown police cruiser on scene with a beer bottle to the windshield.</p>
<p>And, btw, Swarthmore students tend to be just as snotty and entitled towards the police as the Wes kids were the other night. Just indignant that the police would have the nerve to enforce the laws of the state on campus. It's laughable.</p>
<p>Something that really helps at Swarthmore is the Dean arranging an annual "fireside" chat on campus between the Chief of Police and interested students. The Dean buys the pizza and cokes, thus ensuring a good turnout. </p>
<p>The students tell the Police Chief that they resent the "increased" police presence on campus (students have believed it's increased for 100 years in a row now!). The Police Chief tells them that they are subject to the same laws as anyone else and he can't ignore the laws of the state. But, by the end of the conversation, the students realize the police chief isn't some monster and the police chief realizes these are pretty good kids.</p>
<p>IMO, it's a worthwhile excercise in communication and one I would recommend to Wesleyan as it tries to work thru this mess.</p>
<p>In response to the first big mistake: Where were the Wes students going to go? They couldn't go into the student houses (since the shut-down of parties in the houses - which there didn't seem to be anything wrong with - was what led to student congregation in the street). Were they going to go home and go to sleep? In an ideal world, that's what one might expect and hope to happen, but as I've said elsewhere, it's completely unrealistic to expect students on the last day of finals (celebration: we're done!) and the last day before underclassmen leave campus and never see the seniors again (celebration: goodbye party!) to just go home and go to sleep. Campus Public Safety should know that, even if Middletown Police doesn't. I'm not excusing the lack of dispersal among students, but instead suggesting that campus public safety should have expected it, and dealt with it in other more productive ways (for example: allowing in-house parties on the street to start back up as long as noise was constrained to a certain level, IDs were checked if alcohol were being served, etc.) rather than calling the police and simply escalating the situation further.</p>
<p>In response to the second big mistake: Agreed. Whoever did that should never consume alcohol again. (And I think that should go for anyone who is habitually a belligerent drunk).</p>
<p>InterestedDad: I don't think that mockery is appropriate. No students are calling this a massacre. But certain people are calling it a riot - and though I wasn't there personally, first-person accounts I've heard lead me to believe it was far from a riot. Especially before the police got there.</p>
<p>The same type of force has been said to have been used at a "similar party" at UConn. But there people were trying to flip over cars and set things on fire - that is, actual riot-like behavior. Even if one student threw a beer bottle at a cop car (which is a stupid, idiotic, and disrespectful thing to do), that's not a riot.</p>
<p>Tell me: Before the cops arrived, specifically, what laws were being broken?</p>
<p>I.D.- You don't understand. Have you ever been in the middle of a large crowd? It's not that easy to disperse, even if you want to. It's even harder when police lights and barking dogs are attracting even more people to the scene. Add the fact that almost all the arrests that took place involved people who were in fact attempting to leave. It's unfortunate, but, experience has taught Fountain Avenue residents (nearly all of whom are seniors) that simply staying in one spot is the safest way to avoid being arrested.</p>
<p>As for your other point, that these things ought to be more choreographed by the administration in order to safeguard the protection of the students, I don't think that's the solution either. Spontaneity is a part of being young. There are always going to spur of the moment gatherings in neighborhood streets. Heck, in the town my parents grew up there weren't even sidewalks half the time. That's a part of small town life that has slowly been eaten away by television, the internet, and the demands of, well, what better way to put it --the capitalist system.</p>
<p>As I said, this involves bigger issues than just "the right to drink beer". It involves what makes for safe streets in a downtown just emerging from years of decay? I'd rather have a thriving college campus next door to me than a juvenile detention facility, something which many Middletown residents were ambivalent about even fifteen years ago, when the idea was first floated that Wesleyan buy such a facility from the state (it was called, the Long Lane Home For Wayward Women or some such) and convert it to university use.</p>
<p>And, most importantly of all, I.D. there's something no one seems to be paying attention to at all: if there really is no political cost to corraliing a crowd of defenseless kids and shooting rubber bullets at them at point blank range (um, do you remember Kent State?) then, how must it be like to be black or Hispanic caught in downtown Middletown after dark?</p>
<p>Maybe that's why townies seem to approach Wesleyan with such chips on their shoulders. I've never entirely bought the idea that this simmering resentment was entirely "rich people envy". What if you'd been told all your life to "get off the streets" or face a taser gun (or, worse?) I'd be pretty resentful, too.</p>
<p>
[quote]
As I said, this involves bigger issues than just "the right to drink beer".
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Oh puhleeze. That's exactly what it was about. Several hundred partying college students who resented being told to knock it off at 1:30 in the morning on a weeknight.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You don't understand. Have you ever been in the middle of a large crowd?