Cedar Fest leaves black mark on community

I’ve never been ashamed to call myself a Spartan until this week.

Cedar Fest, a revival of a semiannual party that occurred in the ’70s and ’80s, was an embarrassment to our campus and the East Lansing community.

As I stood watching bottles and cans being thrown through the air late Saturday and early Sunday, I hung my head in shame. This wasn’t a party – this was a call for mass chaos.

Being a senior and longtime member of The State News, I had the “privilege” to witness and report on the April 2-3, 2005 disturbances. The mood among the 2005 crowd was celebratory. Things only turned sour after police began teargassing people who were in the streets.

The crowd I saw this weekend didn’t resemble that. These people wanted to riot and be teargassed.

After the 2005 disturbances, there was a divide in the community, one that took a long time to heal. I’m still not sure that wound has completely healed.

A committee of university, city and other officials, along with a few students, an ACLU member and residents spent about eight months analyzing what went wrong in 2005 and how they could prevent it from happening again. East Lansing police Chief Tom Wibert took the recommendations of that committee to heart and implemented them throughout the police department.

This weekend devalued that work and the efforts of many people in the community to heal the wound created by the 2005 disturbances.

When the MSU men’s basketball team moved into the Sweet 16, I went down to City Hall and spoke with Wibert about what was planned for post-basketball celebrations and Cedar Fest. He said the department would be focused on an individual approach to any mass gathering, instead of dealing with the crowd as a whole, and the department also would only use chemical munitions as a last resort.

Wibert was true to his word. Police were pelted with bottles, cans and other objects and remained calm until the crowd was a more serious threat to police and itself. People should have done as they were told and left Cedar Village. They shouldn’t have come back after flash-bang grenades were used to drive people out. But for some unknown reason, people wanted to be teargassed, and that’s what happened.

I know that the crowd that night wasn’t all MSU students. But to those of you who were there and participated in the madness, shame on you. You’re a disappointment to the university and this community. You’ve tarnished our reputation and devalued the degrees we
aspire to receive from MSU.

Cedar Fest was unsettling. It shouldn’t have happened and shouldn’t happen again. There is a big difference between a block party (which you need a permit for) and a riot.

For everyone who participated in the riot, I leave you with this: Are you proud of what you’ve done?

If you are, then something is seriously wrong with you.