By Katie Dugan
You may have heard about the level of destruction that was caused at Saturday’s Pumpkin Festival at Keene State College in Keene, N.H. Rioters damaged windows, cars, doors, fences, and yards.
According to multiple news outlets, the campus was littered with broken glass and beer cans. Hundreds of arrests were made. Dozens of videos on YouTube show party-goers, both students and outside agitators, tearing down street signs and running wild in the streets, throwing things at police who were trying to control the area.
The media has been calling Keene students things like “drunken maniacs,” even taking to Twitter and comparing the riots to the Ferguson riots, bringing up white privilege and calling it a “white version of Ferguson,” according to The Raw Story.
I felt the media was giving the entire student population a very bad, misleading reputation. I personally know several students who attend the college, and I refuse to believe that they were part of the chaos. I sat down with a student from Keene State College who watched the chaos unfold first hand.
“The festival is meant mainly for three purposes,” said Keene sophomore Sydney Shultz. “For Keene to hold the record of most pumpkins lit at once, for the small town to profit on the thousands of families and visitors that show up, and as an excuse for college kids to come from all over the state and party.”
The Raw Story reported that a student traveled from Haverhill, Mass., for the sole purpose of causing mayhem, said, “You’re revolting from the cops. It’s a blast to do things you’re not supposed to do.”
It’s clear that Pumpkin Fest had become a partying destination for college students in surrounding areas. It has been that way for years, but until this year, the annual Pumpkin Fest had never made the news.
“Our gym had been turned into a makeshift hospital,” Shultz said. “I saw plenty of people covered in blood. Some needed stitches, some had concussions.”
As day turned to night, the riots grew worse.
“It was a flood of thousands of kids walking together, tearing street signs out of the ground, hanging from trees … over the night someone’s car had been flipped, and dozens of cars had their tires slashed, windows broken.” Shultz said. The kids were “basically doing anything they could to defy the police.”
Usually, Keene State calls upon local police to aid in keeping the celebrations from getting out of control. Shultz said that this year, the Nashua Police Department, local SWAT Teams, and the state National Guard were all called in. Cops used tear-gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets on students. At one point in the night the campus had gone into lockdown. Shultz explained that the campus “felt like a war zone,” later adding, “I had never been more terrified to be outside.”
By Sunday morning, news outlets all across the country were reporting on the turmoil of the previous night. But the next day, the morale of the town shifted.
Thousands of students and locals helped clean up the streets. An assembly was held on campus that allowed students to express their feelings about what had happened. Since then, a fundraiser has been started for the owner of the flipped car, raising about $4,000 in just one day, Shultz said.
“It makes me very upset that the one thing my school is known for now is throwing an out-of-control Pumpkin Fest party, but it makes me more sad how my school was taken advantage of,” Shultz continued. “I have received nasty looks and comments from adults in the town, saying that we are disgusting as a student body and should be ashamed of ourselves.”
As the community of Keene, N.H., focuses on moving forward from the weekend’s riots, it’s hard to say what the future holds for Keene State.
“I have no idea what’ll happen next year, if they’ll cancel Pumpkin Fest, close the college, or not let students have guests at all.” All that Shultz and the rest of the student body can hope for now is that someday Keene State College will no longer be associated with the misconduct of select individuals who turned a normally fun event into a nightmare.
