I would like to thank Interim Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Campus Life and Dean of Students Enku Gelaye for being so kind as to send me an email last week to remind me of the highlight of the weekend’s events – Blarney Blowout.
This year’s event was particularly spectacular, with hordes of green clad students beginning their march as early as 8 a.m. in some places in town (the bars opened at their earliest legal time – 11:30 a.m.) By noon, dispersal orders, disorderly conduct and public drunkenness charges had been handed out like candy among the crowds as our local Amherst Police Department (APD) struggled to contain the mess. All in all, the collective drinking binge lasted for approximately 20 hours. And it was possibly the worst we’ve ever seen.
Each year, Blarney Blowout makes an enormous spectacle of why the University of Massachusetts is known as the “Zoo,” and each year the administration attempts to fight back. This year, its tactic was to email the entire student body a warning of the potential consequences of participating in the Blowout – increased police presence, ramifications under the student code of conduct and warnings of parental notifications.
At face value, this is an email sent with the good intention of curbing rowdiness with a warning – in practice, this allows the University to maintain to the public that they are fighting the problem, which is necessary because of the way that public opinion can turn on an organization that fails to act.
But while the University has managed to protect its own image by publicly denouncing the event, they may have been the very cause of this year’s particularly bad Blarney Blowout. By emailing the student body, the University simultaneously reminded every student about the event. And by making it sound so grave, they imbued the students with the idea that this would be an event of epic proportions, incensing student participation rather than thwarting it. This year’s blowout was so big that several major news outlets reported on it, as well as social-media targeted news sources like BuzzFeed.
The concept of reverse psychology has been popularized enough by media to be universally known – if you advocate against a certain behavior, you can expect that behavior to be observed. For all of the grandeur of our psychology department, the administration seems to be failing in taking lessons from their past mistakes.
When the Patriots were in the Super Bowl, we received an email asking us to enjoy the game responsibly. Ten minutes after, the student body was abuzz with chatter over the possibility of a post-game riot, which then happened. Whenever the University decides to predict what the students will do, they generate a self-fulfilling prophecy – bad behavior is incited by the expectation of bad behavior.
So after the administration incites massive disturbances of the peace, the police are left to clean up the mess. The Massachusetts Daily Collegian reported use of pepper spray, dispersal orders and shutdown bus services near Puffton to control the crowd. What The Collegian did not report was the additional use of tear gas and rubber bullet rounds fired to contain the crowd. One engineering student walking home from the gym on Saturday afternoon reported being fired at by police with rubber bullet rounds and witnessing tear gas grenades being deployed.
These are intense measures used by police forces in cases of extreme crowd violence, and they are being used on students guilty of what could otherwise be labeled as an “uproar.” In the riots that occurred in Southwest following the Osama bin Laden assassination, students were similarly drunk, lighting fire and fireworks off into the sky. That night, the University of Massachusetts Police Department (UMPD) decided that this uproar did not require tear gas, but simply a dispersal order. The day following that riot, the administration released an email to the student body commending us on our respectable conduct. Evidently, it’s all about the reason that the students get drunk and disorderly that begs both the administration and the police to react differently.
Blarney Blowout is a travesty that occurs year after year. I have, for four years, witnessed vomit in the streets, extreme interpersonal abuse and violence. I have heard tales so horrifying, so indescribably harrowing, that sharing them in a Collegian op-ed would be beyond inappropriate and possibly violate a few Federal Communications Commision regulations. Even worse, the bars and the students have embraced “Halfway to Blarney Blowout,” because waiting a whole year in between incidents just became too much.
Through all of this, the administration of our school remains more focused on maintaining their own image than taking real, positive steps toward reform. As a business, they refuse to accept the reality that, as they increase the student population size, they increase the student behavioral issues and that the town of Amherst does not get larger simply because the University wants to believe it can. Either the administration has failed to recognize this and is seriously wanting for better personnel, or they refuse to admit it and are exacerbating a problem under full awareness, an act tantamount to criminal neglect.
The chancellor of this “Zoo” has promised that his administration will “redouble … its efforts to avert future episodes.” I grow extremely wary of the efforts Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy means to take, as I have spent four years witnessing punitive measures being held in priority over real reform.
As this is my final semester with the campus community, I leave the student readers, the administration and the townspeople with a final warning – if the University continues to expand its student body to 30,000 and beyond and if the University continues to be more liable to fight the students than work with them, we will begin to see events that make Saturdays look tame, and we will have tragedies that far outweigh mere disturbances. It’s just a matter of time.
Adam Terry is a Collegian contributor and can be reached at [email protected].
Adam Cameron • Mar 12, 2014 at 9:12 pm
I’m an ’05 grad, and, usually, a pretty good done (open to second asks as well as second-and-third-second asks). But I will not give another dollar this year until several questions are answered! This whole debacle, to me, seems like a replay of the ’02 Hobart Hoedown.
#1 Why is the Bowl Dance, which, I believe, draws a comparable, in size and property, crowd permissible, while this “Brandywine Blowout” event impermissible?
#2 Why did APD march through, an, I believe, a highly isolated, fenced in, Brandywine apartment complex, instead of opting “quarantine” the area and let the beer run out after a few hours?
#3 Did APD consider a scenario in which a “tumultuous” crowd dispersed, by them, could cleave into many, scatted, “tumultuous” crowds throughout Amherst? Having attended UMass during the “Patriots Dynasty” and “Reverse the Curse” years, I remember observing crowds that had been deemed “tumultuous” splitting into many different and, in my opinion, large and tumultuous, still-out-of-control scattered crowds. Had APD considered such a scenario, then I feel someone needs to question whether their decision to disperse the Barney Blowout was “reckless”, in that they put the resident of North Amherst at risk by “scattering” “tumultuous” crowds onto their doorstep. And had APD not considered such a “scattering” of “tumultuous”, still-out-of-control crowds then, I feel, they may have been negligent in failing to consider such a scenario.
#4 Another important question to ask, what act caused APD to deem the crowd “tumultuous”? From what I have read, some yokels were standing on the roof of a building. I judge standing on a roof, drunk, to be foolish, but hardly “tumultuous”. How will APD prove their decision to deem the crowd “tumultuous” and in need of dispersal legal?
#5 If what the Collegian is publishing is true, then rubber bullets may have been used. Irrespective of whether the order to disperse were legal, who in APD authorized the use of rubber bullets on students? Should he or she exist, then this person issuing the order to use rubber bullets needs to be first crucified by the public, and then ostracized public. It is unclear whether, this person can be jailed, but I feel I would be satisfied were the person who gave the order to fire rubber bullets on student, should he or she exist, be sent to jail for 40 days or so.
#6 The Collegian reports that administration, from what I infer, “hyped” the blowout. This, again, to me, smacks of ’02 Hobart Hoedown. Now, cynically, I must the question must be asked, did administration expect this outcome? UMass, shamefully, made the national news. Was this event just a ploy to get ink to increase national reach and lure those seeking to attend a “party school”? Be that true, then, I feel, one could say UMass Administration is degrading the value of alumnae’ degrees, And, sadly, the more I re-read the above article the more I find it to be feasible.
At this point, even with all the outstanding questions, I feel, the best thing that could happen for UMass Amherst would be for all this Barney Blowout nonsense to die down, for it all to just “settle”. For all those arrested to be allowed back to UMass, the real one, the flagship, to get their degrees and contribute to society (with a lesson learned).
Jordan Parks • Mar 12, 2014 at 7:39 pm
I can’t take this article seriously if you can’t get your facts straight. There was no tear gas, only pepper spray. Neither UMPD nor Amherst PD even own tear gas. It was mainly Amherst PD handling situations off campus with a few UMPD called in for back up. Students are addressing their anger at the wrong department. Using reverse psychology is, for lack of a better term, a cop out. If someone tells you not to rob a bank or steal are you going to do it? No. Because as adults we have to take responsibility for our actions. Because the school tells you not to do something is no reason to do it. Everyone who was at Blarney knew Blarney was happening this weekend. What would you have done to prevent thousands of students from being loud and obnoxious, littering, drinking underage, and disrupting the community in which infants, the elderly, and everyone in between lives?
Dr. Ed Cutting • Mar 12, 2014 at 1:58 pm
“…if the University continues to be more [inclined] to fight the students than work with them, we will begin to see events that make [Saturday’s] look tame, and we will have tragedies that far outweigh mere disturbances. It’s just a matter of time.”
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BRAVO!!! I wrote something quite similar to that a decade ago, after the Hobart Riot which is when the cos started shooting at the students — and again a few years later when the students started to pelt the cops with beer bottles & such (which didn’t used to happen) — and all of this was ignored and things have continued to get worse and worse and worse.
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I encourage everyone — including the cops — to read what Richard Nixon’s _Commission on Campus Unrest_ had to say about what happened at Kent & Jackson State Colleges. (Of the two, Jackson State was the far more eggregious of the two — 40 cops firing 140 shotgun rounds at a women’s dormitory — but these were White cops, the dead kids were Black and this was Mississippi in 1970 — enough said?) Now Nixon wasn’t exactly friendly toward the collegiate crowd, and his commission had several high-ranking military officers (or retired officers) on it — this was not a hippie-friendly group.
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Hence what they had to say is so incredibly relevant — they blamed the colleges for what happened.
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Will anyone listen now? Or do we have to wait until people die first?
Lindsay • Mar 12, 2014 at 11:50 am
Incredible article, just even comparing to our tailgates in the past for homecoming and other games, the amount of students and the way UMPD handled the crowds, BY DOING THEIR JOB AND KEEPING STUDENTS SAFE. Students of all ages were consuming alcohol but still felt a sense of accountability with police officers near by. Incredible difference just by not showing up in riot gear.
Schlomo • Mar 12, 2014 at 10:37 am
Expel everyone who got arrested