By the time March Madness comes, students and community members will know exactly what to do and expect if a disturbance occurs — if all goes according to the Celebrations Committee's plan.
About 30 university, city, student and community leaders met Wednesday as the newly revamped Celebrations Committee to discuss how they could implement recommendations made by an independent commission that reviewed the April 2-3 disturbances.
The East Lansing City Council approved plans to implement most of these recommendations at its work session Tuesday night.
"Now it's up to the city and university to do things," said Jean Golden, co-chairperson of the committee and deputy city manager. "The talking is over. Now is the time for action."
The committee was established 2003. Its membership has grown from about 15 mainly university representatives to almost 50 members from the city as well as the university, said Ginny Haas, co-chairperson of the committee and MSU director of community relations.
One of the recommendations made by the independent commission was to create such a committee sponsored by both the university and the city.
With the NCAA men's basketball tournament about two months away, committee members stressed urgency in informing students about the rules pertaining to a possible disturbance.
"The main change is a greater amount of clarification and transparency in what is actually going to happen after major tournament games," Haas said. "(Last year), people didn't really understand. We sent out messages about celebrating responsibly, but they didn't know what that meant."
The committee plans to send out an e-mail survey to about 1,800 undergraduate students by Monday to find out their feelings on a planned celebratory event, and what they view as "acceptable behavior."
The independent commission challenged the celebratory committee to make recommendations on a possible city-sanctioned celebration event. But the committee's main concern appeared to be informing students on the expectations and rules before a possible disturbance occurs.
Committee members agreed that people need to better understand the rules pertaining to celebratory events and disturbances.
The committee decided to meet again in two weeks to collect the information and decide how to get the message out. It's important to have clear communication during an event, said Melissa Horste, director of community affairs for ASMSU.
ASMSU is MSU's undergraduate student government.
"Half of the people arrested (during the April 2-3 disturbances) were non-MSU students," Horste said. "There's only so much we can do before an event as far as communication."
Improved speaker systems might help communication during an event, said East Lansing police Chief Tom Wibert. These speakers could help officers let people know where to go and what to do to avoid trouble.
But face-to-face communication with officers will hopefully prevent the need for riot gear or tear gas, Wibert said.
