Cedar Fest riots: MSU alum’s perspective

[Ed. note: We asked MSU alum Nolan Treadway to discuss his opinion of last week's Cedar Fest riot.  We welcome your feedback in comments.]

After hearing about the events last weekend in East Lansing, I was brought back to my years at Michigan State. I was at Michigan State from 1996-2001. Much of the commentary and finger-pointing going on now are the same as after the riots when I was a student in East Lansing. Obviously, this behavior is as inexcusable now as it was when I was in East Lansing, but it requires that we ask why the Michigan State community experiences so many more riots than other similar colleges?

Continued -Having borne witness to several of these while I was at Michigan State, I’ll say that the first time you are at a gathering that large that goes from a bunch of drunk kids to people burning stuff,  destroying property, it is really shocking. I remember watching as a bonfire broke out 100 feet in front of me at the corner of Abbot and Grand River in downtown East Lansing.  I was standing right in front of the Spartan relief that greets you at the Abbot entrance to campus and looking down the block at the police and fire officers gathered, wondering if they were going to come arrest those people, or if they even knew there was a fire. They did know there was a fire and their response was to come in with tear gas and rubber bullets and douse the fire. That was the first incident of the night and I went home, but the disorder spread across East Lansing to Cedar Village and lasted all night. After that, there was a lot of talk about how bad this made us look and I’ll say that I personally realized that by just being a (sober) bystander in the crowd was inciting this behavior and if the people who were just watching left the crowd when a fire started, the police could come get the small number of people actually destroying property. For some reason, that lesson didn’t sink in with everyone and there would be more riots before I left school. That was in 1998.

When MSU made the final four in 1999, it was the worst kept secret in Michigan that there was going to be a riot, win or lose, after the semifinal game against Duke, which was on a Saturday. It seemed that everyone’s delinquent friends from high school came to visit them that weekend. People from U of M, Central Michigan and Western Michigan all descended on East Lansing and as soon as the game ended, people poured out onto the streets and it took less than an hour to get ugly. That night was one of the worst at MSU, over 10 cars were burned including a police car. Rioting occurred in at least three locations (that I can remember) that night all across East Lansing.

The reaction from the city and the school after 1999 was much more severe. This is when they went after photos from news sources and anyone who had a video of the riot. They began to literally show them on a loop on a community access channel in East Lansing. Well into the summer, you could turn on that channel and there would be still photos of people on cars, jumping over bonfires, etc., with a crawl to call the EL Police if you could identify any of the people. And those who they did catch had the book thrown at them. I know at least one person who got caught. He had the misfortune of standing on a burnt out car when someone snapped his picture. He did not learn the lesson that even if you didn’t burn the car, if you are in the crowd around the burning car, you should probably find something better to do than stand around and watch it, let alone climb on its burnt out shell.

The happy ending here is that the next year, 2000, when MSU won the national championship, there were no fires or riots. There were tens of thousands of people out on the streets, but I think it is safe to say the students had collectively learned that it was more fun to not burn things and have to hear about it for weeks and months than to just run around in the streets high-fiving, which is what we did. I have to say it was the most fun night of my college career.

Unfortunately, the lessons we learned about the high negatives and low positives of rioting graduated with us and none of the kids now on campus know about the downside of all this behavior. They only know of the passion of the moment. Hopefully, they’ll collectively figure it out now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it took another similar incident.

That said, local officials have some responsibility for the frustrations that students experience, frustrations that may help fuel such behavior.  There can be little doubt the police and city in East Lansing are perceived as being anti-student. MSU routinely tops the list of number of underage drinking citations, partially because it is one of the largest schools in the country, not because we drink at a higher rate but because our cops are more aggressive. Also, the city of East Lansing goes out of its was to stick it to the students. Like the fact that the city council is not based on districts, so that all the seats are citywide so there are never any students on city council. Or the fact that you can’t park your car on any city streets (even neighborhoods) from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m., to prevent students from being able to park overnight if they don’t live there (which may be a fine goal but it has the effect of frustrating students who live off campus). None of this excuses rioting, but it may provide some context to why MSU seems to always have these problems while other universities do not.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about those riots that occurred while I was in East Lansing and how they could have been prevented. Now the question comes up again. I do not have the answer to how, but I do know it is a horrible tradition that MSU will have to shake one way or another.

Nolan Treadway was born and raised in Michigan. He is a native of Ann Arbor and graduated from the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University in 2001 where he majored in Supply Chain Management. He currently resides in Washington, D.C., where he is pursuing a master’s in public policy at American University. He is also the logistics director for the annual Netroots Nation convention.