Spraying people involved in riots or disturbances with water from fire hoses was just one suggestion made at the independent commission meeting on Friday.

The commission, which has been meeting for the past several months, is reviewing the April 2-3 disturbances and the police response to them.

The idea was suggested by East Lansing resident and commission member Nancy Schertzing and was rejected by other commission members.

"Immediately people had the vision of the water cannons used against the civil rights marchers," Schertzing said. "That was not even remotely close to what I was talking about."

ASMSU representative and commissioner Derek Wallbank said the idea was an odd one. ASMSU is MSU's undergraduate student government.

"I don't think anyone else was with her on that," Wallbank said.

The meetings are used for brainstorming ideas and exploring different possibilities, Schertzing said

"I only meant it as an alternative," she said. "Could we create a mist of water instead of chemicals, but the answer was no because fire trucks are never used other than to fight fires. That's not even a remote possibility."

The commission has prepared several recommendations to prevent disturbances when large groups of people gather.

Some of those recommendations include using reflective numbered pennies, or jerseys, that make it easy to identify police officers individually and a possible venue for post-game celebrations.

"It would be like they have in other university towns where people can get together and party and do different things you can't do in the middle of a street," Schertzing said. "We don't know much about the venue but it's very clear that if the commission decides what the venue is, the likelihood that people will go to it is very small.

"It has to be created out of the thinking of students - the people that would be using it."

In order to curb visitors' expectations that people can riot at MSU, Wallbank proposed forwarding public documents of visiting students who are arrested in the city to their respective universities.

"If you get arrested for doing something bad in East Lansing, your university is going to know about it," Wallbank said. "Our students aren't the ones that screw up. We're a world-class institution, but we have some people who come to riot."

Wallbank said there needs to be more of a punishment for non-MSU students who get into trouble on campus.

"This is a punishment that exists for MSU students but if someone else comes to town to riot, it doesn't necessarily exist for them. Quite honestly, I trust the students at Michigan State not to riot."

During a public hearing scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 26 at an undetermined location, commission members will listen to public testimony.

The commission's report will be released before the Oct. 26 meeting and will convey their recommendations to the city.

Political science and pre-law sophomore Casey Mobley who was present during the April 2-3 disturbances, but not at the commission meeting, said the public hearing should be in a place accessible to students.

"It needs to be somewhere central," Mobley said. "With the new ordinance with drinking games, it feels like they're trying to take everything away.

"Have the hearing on campus."

Schertzing said the commission's decisions rely heavily on public input.

"What this commission does is make recommendations to City Council," she said. "We don't have any authority to implement any of these things.

"We will be making the best recommendations we can make based on everything we've heard so we don't have a replay of April 2-3. We don't have all the answers, and no one on the commission would pretend that we do."

The next meeting is from 8 a.m. to noon on Thursday Oct. 13 at the Hannah Community Center. A room has not been decided.