It's apparent no East Lansing City Council members were around to personally witness the tear gas attacks police officers launched against peacefully celebrating students following the MSU men's basketball team's loss to the University of North Carolina on Saturday. Chances are, they were sitting in the quiet comfort of their homes far away from the areas of the city coated in nausea-inducing tear gas.
When they woke up in the morning and heard about the 43 arrests and barrage of court cases that would follow, they likely wondered to themselves how they could help. But their questions weren't meant to reckon how they could come to the aid of students - their constituents - who might be wrongly prosecuted or to ask if the officers took the right course of action.
Instead, the city attorney classified Saturday night's events a riot. That decision, which contradicts the police's classification of the event as a "civil disturbance," is meant to bring heftier charges to those students. To clarify: The overzealous police force declined to call the celebration a "riot," but officials who weren't even there have found it convenient to do so.
The State News does not advocate students breaking the law and causing destruction, and those who committed such serious offenses should be punished. However, many people who were arrested on Saturday night committed no such offense.
The city reviewed Saturday's tickets, including misdemeanors, to figure out if they could stick people with felonies, which can be issued in a riot situation. Those students, who police are using as a public shield for a sloppily executed celebration strategy, could face prison time, heftier fines, loss of voting rights and suspension from MSU.
The city is seeking to apply a law that was passed after the MSU men's basketball-related riots of 1999, which states anyone convicted of a riot-related offense within 2,500 feet of a public university or college could be barred from entering one for up to two years.
This decision is an inane way of handling the situation, and it's clear city officials are clueless as to what really transpired on Saturday night. This is made perfectly clear by a comment from Deputy City Manager Jean Golden:
"They weren't celebrating, they were gathering together for, I don't know what," she said of students who came out after the game. You're right, Jean. You don't know what. So why are you trying to vilify them?
City officials need to see April 3 for what it was - something completely unique from the riots that transpired in 1999 and 2003. They can't just switch into riot mode on this one. They can't just blindly get behind police, grab a handful of students, make an example of them and call it a day.
The truth is going to come out at some point.
If the East Lansing City Council professes to be a legitimate civic body, it will start turning its questions toward the poor police decisions that were made on April 3. That is, of course, unless it was a part of those decisions, which remains to be seen.
ASMSU already has started asking questions. The undergraduate student government is working on a student survey to better illustrate feelings about the incident. It is our hope that others, particularly the administrators of this institution, will follow suit.
