The administration, students and police all made mistakes during Blarney Blowout 2014. Though it meant well in sending out emails, the administration mostly succeeded in bringing attention to the event: I didn’t hear about Blarney until I received mine. The email was sensationalized and spread by the media, making it seem like the party to be at for crazy college students, leading students and party-goers from other places to visit their friends at UMass for it. In fact, many colleges had their spring break that week, so their students had plenty of time to travel to Amherst.

As an RA, I can tell you that the worst vandalism and behavior never comes from your own residents, but from their guests. Why would the students wreck their own homes? This is what made Blarney so horrible this year. I’m sure there were many UMass students involved in this, but I am also sure that the massiveness of the crowds attending Blarney this year was due in part to the administration’s email essentially advertising it to whoever reads the news.

The students were hardly innocent. There were some that went sober just to have fun, but a large number of students had open containers in public, were drinking underage and were, in general, public nuisances. In this, I sympathize with the members of the Amherst community. I feel bad that my fellow students constantly disturb their peace by shouting, drinking in public and generally being belligerent, especially late at night and on the weekends.

I feel bad that the community ends up hating us, even if some of us have never partied at all, because in their minds, we are all the same. They only see the rabid, drunken students that wander the streets and wake them up at night. They don’t see the ones that study hard, volunteer in the community and work their way through college, because that image is eclipsed by the actions of a select population. In the end, this hurts the University’s relationship with the town. Even if it’s only a small percentage of students that is breaking the rules, there are still consequences for everyone involved.

Now, to address the police. I see students claim that the police used unnecessary force and that their presence made the gathering turn violent. I’ve also seen some people argue that the police should be allowed to use whatever methods they can to break up a potentially aggressive and destructive crowd. In a way, both of these perspectives are correct. The students wanted to celebrate with their friends and enjoy their college experience. It’s unfortunate that so many chose to celebrate near the Townehouses, on public property (where it is illegal to drink), instead of the actual designated location of the party: The bars.

Obviously, the police needed to take action in order to maintain the peace. They even waited to move in until someone started shooting off fireworks, even when they could see all of the open containers and the massive amounts of littering. I commend them for doing their jobs and taking on such a huge crowd. Mobs can be frightening, and the police did the best they could with the resources available to them.

However, some of their methods should be questioned. Pepper-spraying someone in the face is not a good way to handle someone who is just standing there. Perhaps the man in question was yelling, but he was obviously unarmed, standing by himself and with his arms open. In this case, less harmful methods of incapacitation should have been used.

Shooting pepper spray at people who are already dispersing will only make them angrier and more likely to throw things at the police. If they’re already being sprayed for cooperating, why shouldn’t they throw things? In their minds, the police were hurting them, and they wanted to either defend themselves or take out their anger on the police. I don’t know who shot or sprayed or threw first, but both sides were prepared to retaliate against the other.

This is why some students are saying that the police presence made the gathering more violent. It absolutely did. No one is going to be calm when they are being shot at, regardless of whether it’s tear gas, pepper spray or rubber bullets. No one is going to be calm when they are being pelted with beer cans and ice and trying to break up a huge crowd of drunken people.

Agitated people are more likely to be aggressive. The police officers were only doing what they were trained to do, although some may have gone overboard. But the way they are trained to handle these large crowds of students needs to change.

For events like these, there is no way to prevent students from congregating, which the administration has constantly attempted to do with few results. Instead, there needs to be more of a focus on having a safe place for students to congregate, where police can easily monitor crowds without feeling pressured or under attack. It should be far enough away from the town that families and other town members can feel safe and in control of their community. There needs to be better police relations with the students, so that the students feel safe with the police rather than threatened. But mostly, there needs to be more cooperation between students, the administration, the town and the police.

In a way, we are all to blame for what happened this Saturday. Everyone played a part: The administration’s emails, the media’s sensationalism, the students’ rowdiness, the police force’s use of aggressive tactics and then the petty arguing between all the different sides afterward. If we could all consider everyone else’s point of view, maybe we could actually get some compromises going. I look forward to when that can happen.

Sarah Dingman is a Collegian contributor and can be reached at [email protected].