The city of East Lansing asserts the Cedar Village area is a poor place for students to gather after NCAA Tournament basketball games because it's congested and hard to effectively police.
The MSU administration doesn't want students on campus after games either. They've worked with police to close campus to crowds of revelers which might cause expensive property damage as in March 2003. Thus the student-celebration issue has been tossed back and forth like a hot potato.
There is still some hope for progress. An independent commission, formed to review the April 2-3 disturbances, is exploring the possibility of an on-campus event after NCAA Tournament games.
This seems like a good idea in theory, but it's uncertain if people will actually attend. In general, revelers simply want to gather with their peers, and as the tradition stands, Cedar Village is where it's at. Being corralled into a designated safe area will not jive well with the usual post-game crowds.
To give the idea some credit, there are some suitable places on campus for a crowd to gather. The old tailgating standard of Munn field would do. It's close to Breslin Center, where many people go to watch NCAA basketball games on the big screen.
Drinking, however, would be illegal. Although we'd like to think that people can party without drinking, the poor tailgating turnout after the drinking games ban last fall proved otherwise. In all likelihood, nobody would show up to an event on Munn field, or anywhere else on campus for that matter.
If the drinking restrictions were suspended, it might be a different story. Fat chance that'll happen.
One other idea might be to place a perimeter of police (who aren't eager to jump the gun) around Cedar Village, and other popular post-game gathering spots, such as the Gunson Street neighborhood in order to contain crowds within this area, keeping them from getting too rowdy. The police already do this. But instead of intervening immediately after crowds start to build, as they did in April, they should take a more passive stance. This means if someone breaks the law, deal with them individually rather than dispersing the entire crowd.
The linchpin of this whole scheme is students would have to party responsibly. From the reports presented by the police to the East Lansing City Council, it's clear that a reason officers dispersed the crowds during the April 2-3 disturbances was they felt their safety was in jeopardy.
Only a few people were being violent and causing these problems, but look at the issue from the officers' perspective. For instance, if you're hosting a house party, you don't want people getting in fights, stealing and breaking things. When the situation gets out of hand, everyone has to go home.
We aren't endorsing the police response. Their aggressive stance might even have instigated problems. But students need to understand that the situation will only improve in the future when a standard is set for celebrant responsibility.
