It all started on Foster Street, in Keene, New Hampshire. The fond memories of my first Pumpkin Fest four years ago when I was a young freshman with big white eyes and a soul looking to suck on the tit of a good time.
Back then I wanted anything to do with where ‘it’ was at.
Now I am a seasoned veteran of the collegiate social charade. A 21 year old, formidable, 6-foot white male, idly existing along the white social plain. The consummate secretariat of financially aided partying.
Or so I thought.
The plan was simple. My friends and I had a rolling ETA for Keene at around 1:00 p.m. In time to see our close friend, and co-captain of the Keene State College soccer team, Brett Sullivan.
I rendezvoused with hometown friends, Eddy Milazzo, Sam Hutchings and Eddy’s roommate Seamus. It was around 12:00 p.m. on a grey Saturday in central New England. The sun rarely shines on Worcester, which smells like Boston, but tastes like Poughkeepsie.
We gathered our things and hit the cheapest liquor store to pick our poison for what was sure to be memorable night at Keene’s annual Pumpkin Festival.
By the time we found a place to park near the Walmart just outside campus, the soccer game was over — a 1-1 tie with Umass Boston. Brett’s cousin and hometown friend Jeff Craven met us at the junction of the strip mall parking lot and the very New England foliage covered bike path, which connects the Keene athletic fields to the rest of campus.
After our greetings and formalities, we were alerted to the seriousness of the day we were about to enter.
“There has already been four casualties.” Brett said, in a surprising but matter-of-fact tone. “After the game ended, our manager came to us and said four people have already overdosed and went to the hospital”
I don’t know why the initial presumption was so fatal, but it was. Un-tethered rumors like this, gave the whole weekend a schoolyard feel: recess period at high noon, where the adults grasped for control, but the kids always held court.
The path to campus was riddled with kids just like us, carrying cases of beer on our migratory trek to the watering hole. We were immediately met by swaths of kids telling us to turn around and
that riot police were already throwing tear gas, shooting paintballs and breaking up parties.
Looking down the stretch of faceless youths freshly dejected but noticeably resilient, we accepted our first minor setback and took the back way to Brett’s house on Foster Street. The consistent sound of college swelled alongside us as we traveled parallel to the madness.
Normalcy was returned at Foster Street as everyone got acquainted with each other, forming our bonds and game plans for the night ahead. I’ll never forget talking to some kid ad-nauseam about his genuine fear of Ebola. For him, the threat of Ebola lurked around every pumpkin display.
I never got his name, but I remember trying to assure him that the actual possibility of getting Ebola was so small, that it was exhausting to truly worry about it.
His reply was, “You don’t know that, and the scariest part is that if you get it, you pretty much have 30 days to live, and then you’re done.”
This conversation further brought me back to grade school, when kids would come in to school fresh after listening to their parents — watching the talking heads bring attention to the SARS epidemic in Asia.
A group of misinformed kids spewing the jargon that oozed out of the cylical news networks. Some things never change.
We travelled across town to a party with the rest of our friends visiting for the weekend. As we made our way to the party, we walked down Main Street to check out the festivities and beautifully endless displays of lit jack-o-lanterns.
My favorite was the “ebola victim #3” pumpkin, that had X’s for eyes, and an open mouth with pumpkin guts spilling out like vomit.
After some time at the party, we went out to the front porch to people-watch and get a feel for how the night was progressing.
We could hear bottles being smashed, and saw the orange glow of a fire on the next street over. I got that itch again, and started to feel young and eager to break free from routine socializing. We cut across the street, sauntered through someone’s yard, fit through the gaping hole in a big wooden fence, and got close to the spectacle that was the beginning of the end of Pumpkin Fest, forever.
Students look at riot police (off-screen left) during the initial conflicts on Baker Street at Keene State College
Hundreds of party animals herded around the fire in the middle of Baker street which was well stoked by a couch, empty beer cases and old fashioned American persistence. On the opposite side of the street, about 100 yards away, a line of riot police poised with flashlights and trepidation.
I began filming with my cell phone at this point, with the hopes of capturing that gut-check moment of civil disobedience.
In reality, the atmosphere was generally passive.
Kids didn’t really venture too close to the police line and the police waited for something to subside before they made any movements.
Kids yelled, “They’re (police) coming”, which would be followed by yelps of triumph and unease. One kid seemed to appear out of the darkness of the police line yelling, “Stop throwing bottles!” at the top of his lungs.
‘He was clearly paid off’, was the subconscious reaction among the crowd, who showed no signs of stopping. We roamed around this scene for a good while, soaking in the playground.
The street was our boulevard of broken dreams. The orange glow was our burning man.
Opposite riot police; Students gather around a burning couch on Baker Street at Keene State College
Nothing was really happening at this point in the night, so we headed back to our party on Wilcox. Shortly after that, we saw a group of 20 kids piling up beer cases on the street and lighting it on fire. This was a sobering moment, because it made us realize, that the relatively controlled fire on Baker, was influencing people to invite police and destruction.
We walked over and asked the kids what they were doing. Hostility was in the air, as they understood that we wanted them to leave.
They yelled, “Fire! Ya! Lets brings the riot over here, f— the cops!” They started chanting fire, fire, fire, and just as their momentum grew; the girl who lived in the house we were at, came over and dumped a water bottle on the tiny blaze.
The faces on these twisted souls was like a dejected baby who just got his toy taken away. Nostrils flared, and I prepared for an outnumbered brawl, towards which I had little animosity towards.
I desperately reasoned that we had a good thing going (on Wilcox) with no cops and everyone having a good time. Some banter followed, and the kids went on their way, and we sighed in relief at having escaped that nightmare.
After this, Eddy and I decided to go back to Baker to find Hutch and Seamus. When we arrived, the police had moved closer and the resistance was losing steam.
“They’re starting to shoot!” someone yelled, and the fear of paintballs and rubber bullets that we had heard about earlier threw caution into the crowd. I took cover behind a car, and started filming again. I was cut short by an angry girl trying to kick me off her property, as the riot police closed in– about 25 yards away.
I was teetering on the edge of safety, as she tried pushing me into the street, where the heat of the fire was close, and the riot police were even closer. I managed to move past her, behind her SUV and into the darkness of her side yard. Ed and I went back to Wilcox to find Hutch, Seamus and Jeff.
We called Brett, who was on Elliot Street with the soccer team, and decided to move in that direction.
Riot Police advance on Baker Street
We got on to Winchester Street, which would take us through the rotary and across town to Brett. Baker and Winchester are perpendicular to each other and meet to form an L on the edge of campus. The crowd of fire people from Baker, had been pushed back onto Winchester, where another crowd was being pushed back from the top of that street.
We got flanked. People found clothing donation dumpsters and pushed them towards the top of Winchester to make a barricade. The Infamous “USA” chant echoed the block, and we reveled in the collective effort to thwart whatever the police tried to achieve. At first I kind of got behind this movement. Outsmarted and out-positioned, we were the underachieving, underdog of society to these cops.
They saw us as snot-nosed, ignorant, intoxicated, frenzied youths in revolt.
Riot Police on Winchester Street
“Shoot me motherf—–!” Someone yelled as they passed me giving the double middle finger to the police line ahead. I paused. We were snot nosed kids. We were and are completely ignorant. We were rebels without a cause with no place to go.
And I quickly lamented in that moment, that the night had gotten to a point where it was so past resisting the police just for the sake of resisting. We had reached a point of critical mass, where intuition took a backseat, and a subconscious swell of misguided cultural influence took over.
“’Til the break of dawn yo!” Another person yelled as they threw another bottle. I immediately thought of the movie Project X, and realized these kids were trying to recreate a state of nature so anarchical that the rush would overcome any repercussion that was bound to happen.
Suddenly it hit me: that distinct smell of spent fireworks. An immediate burning of my sinus’ and back of my throat, as my eyes welled with tears, and I realized I was being gassed.
Everyone yelled “Tear gas, run!” so we scattered. I caught a glimpse of Hutch and Ed who were ahead of me and I ran after them. My initial reaction was to rub the tears out of my eyes. This only made it worse, and I heard Hutch’s voice ahead of me yelling, “Don’t rub your eyes!”
I was already knuckle deep, and took out my fingers to a state of total blindness. I saw nothing but white and screamed at Ed and Hutch that I couldn’t see. They yelled back to run straight, and I followed their voices all the way to Fiske Quad in the center of campus where other students had taken refuge.
My sight came back within 15-30 seconds and there was no more burning. Aside from the fact that my eyes were redder than the devil’s backbone, I wasn’t really concerned about people thinking I was high.
In fact I wasn’t concerned about anything. The quad was quiet, well lit and full of displaced faces looking for the next place to go.
We pressed on to Elliot Street.
Our travels on the night of Pumpkin Fest.
The soccer house on Elliot Street was nice. We found Brett, and were surrounded by people we knew and felt like we were back at the real Pumpkin Fest. As the party progressed we found the keg, and circled around the watering hole — sharing tales of the night. After some time, it sounded like a good idea to head back to Wilcox for final call of drinks and laughs with friends before eventually calling it a night.
We made our way back across Fiske Quad, and into the parking lot where we had gotten tear-gassed. People were scattered and cops were roaming. We had to cross the lot, and win this game of sharks and minnows if we wanted to all make it to Wilcox.
We took it slow and didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves. Suddenly I heard Seamus, Jeff, and Hutch scream and run. They were getting pepper sprayed on the nape of their necks. I looked around and saw no cops near me.
I laughed to myself and walked behind a line of cops spraying and yelling at people. I was momentarily invisible, and loving every second of it.
We collected ourselves and reached all that was holy at the time. Wilcox Street, which hadn’t been touched by cops all night.
Inside, we talked about what happened back in the parking lot. Jeff, Seamus and Hutch got sprayed slightly, but not bad. Brett had a splotchy red mark on his back from getting tazed. None of this was severe, it was expected collateral.
We stepped outside to what it feels like when you get all five stars in Grand Theft Auto. For those that don’t know, that is when you go so rogue in the video game, that you have the maximum amount of police on your tail trying to kill you.
We looked up in the sky to see a helicopter with a spotlight, calling out in its metallic voice, “go inside!”. We had pizza on our minds so nothing quite mattered at this point. We crossed Winchester yet again, this time to find a Nissan Maxima completely flipped upside down.
For some reason, this didn’t spark our interest as much as it would have if we found it earlier in the night.
We still stopped and took pictures, and started to absorb the fact that this will most likely be the last Pumpkin Fest we experience. The rest of the walk was like a dream. Tired teenagers wandered around us, and a few were still running around looking for trouble. Mostly the streets were littered with garbage, glass and unrecognizable pieces of yesterday’s life.
We got our pizza, and dropped our heads into nothingness as we slept away the night.
On Sunday morning, Keene was spotless.
Brett explained that the town starts cleaning up the night of the festival. Also, he said a number of Keene State students get up early every year to help out in the morning. This was hopeful, but I still remember the terrible things that found their way into Saturday night — and we didn’t even smash any pumpkins.
Most importantly is that not everyone had a good time at Keene. There were 84 arrests and close to 30 injuries. There were no deaths.
In talking to Anthony Francis, the starting quarterback of the Marist College football team, he explained why he left Keene early that Saturday.
“I think around 2:00 p.m. I saw the most (riot police) because at one point I saw some kid’s knee like half off. This kid was so badly hurt he needed help right away. I’ve never seen so much blood in my entire life to be honest. I also saw another girl with her head gashed open from a bottle. I left before dark because I feared for my own safety, seeing kids running around with powder on their fingers asking for drugs …I left because I was scared, it was out of control.”
In defense of the students at Keene State College, much of the blame is on students from other schools who visited. When I asked Brett why he thought this year was so bad compared to years past, he explained.
“I think it got more out of hand than years past, because the festival is becoming more popular, and more and more out of town kids and students from other schools are showing up. Since they have no ties to the school, they act however they want. The community is still very upset with the student body, but I think they still hold us in very high regard, because they see us year-round, and know that’s not what we’re about.”
These sentiments are visible in local news reports immediately following the riots as well.
Ultimately though, everyone is responsible for what happened, and the disturbing behavior from students is inexcusable on every level.
When I got home, I started looking at the news coverage of Keene and immediately became disgusted with what I saw. I was not disgusted in revisiting the events that took hold, I was disgusted with people comparing the Keene State “riots” to the protests that have been happening in Ferguson, Missouri since August.
Twitter lit up with the hashtags #Pumpkinspiceriots, and #whitepriveledge.
The grievances of racially biased media coverage, and partial police force echoed the annals of my blue and white feed. I empathized with these people, who see mainstream media outlets covering the Keene riots as a trivial happen-stance of youthful debauchery.
I am also critical of television news networks distorting coverage of Ferguson, labeling protesters as ‘thugs’ and advising through their plush studios that the youths in Ferguson should be in school instead of protesting. (Yes this happened.)
On the other hand, Keene is not a microcosm for national discourse on objective media, or racial double standards. Keene has a different systemic issue that is generational.
Pumpkin Fest is over with.
As the beer settles and the trash gets swept away, so should this comparison of the Pumpkin Spice Riots of 2014 and the Ferguson Protests.
Comparing these two displays of civil disobedience is nauseating, and thoroughly demeaning to everything that the people of Ferguson and St. Louis are fighting for.
What’s happening in Ferguson is a protest fueled by a deep-seated suppression and festering resentment from the predominantly black community of Ferguson, experiencing contemporary racial inequity.
What happened in Keene however, is a riot caused by the dismantling of house parties early in the afternoon Saturday, which led to students drinking and wandering in the streets. This led to escalated use of police force, and an instigation of riotous behavior throughout the night.
People get rowdy, but I don’t use that word to describe the raucous behavior of white kids throwing bottles at cops. I use that word to describe people as a race: not black, white or in-between, but a human race filled with social responsibility.
A description of fact, that everyone has the propensity to act irresponsibly and yes, riot.
One of the reasons Keene got so much national attention, is because the absurdity of hearing the words “A riot at a pumpkin festival in New Hampshire,” smacks the ears as awkwardly as someone saying, “Amanda Bynes is just misunderstood.”
The militarization of police in Keene strikes a nerve in America right now, which channels the injustices and shortcomings we have been watching unfold in Ferguson for months. The media labeled the overwhelmingly white kids at Keene as “rowdy”, because they were.
The chaos at Keene had no motivation.
It was a spectacle of misguided teenage angst more than any sort of youthful systemic rebellion. I like to think that the riot police at Keene this past weekend used noticeable discretion in their tactics, because they saw how not to do things from watching Ferguson’s police.
The protests in Ferguson have mostly been peaceful, and it is a shame that they have been met with such an intimidating use of militarized police force. Unfortunately, that is the world we live in.
The killing of Michael Brown is a travesty and sparks an intense debate about the use of force and racial inequity within judicial and legislative bodies.
What can be said about white privilege relative to Keene, is not how it relates to police brutality. To say that police brutality would have been present in Keene if the crowd was mostly black, is a farce. Regardless of the skin color at Keene, there was a better understanding to the context of that crowd.
Police brutality occurs when there is misunderstanding between the police and the crowd. There was no misunderstanding at Keene. The police knew kids were drunk. The police know kids don’t like cops, and thus prepared for retaliation — granted it escalated to be much worse than they planned for.
Ferguson is about race in America. Keene is not.
White privilege at Keene is represented in a generational misunderstanding of our social responsibility, a responsibility to respect and empathize.
The whole attitude of Keene smacked of desperate attempts to create a state of nature. It was kids tearing up the playground, after recess had already ended.
We are fostering a generation that embraces binge drinking and substance abuse as the primordial rallying cry of college.
I would be a hypocrite to say that I have not had my share of foggy nights. I recognize this, and it is important for the rest of us to recognize it too, so that things like Pumpkin Fest 2014 never happen again, and we can return to the Pumpkin Festivals that laid the way for so many great memories in the past.
Keene imputes an atavistic realization of a tangible cultural obsession with partying and disregard. An understanding to why Keene ‘happened’, is simply that and nothing more.
Alex Spiess is a senior at Marist College, where he majors in communications with a double concentration in sports communication and journalism, as well as a minor in global studies. He is a member of the football team and chapter president of Marist’s Society of Professional Journalists. He also writes for Marist’s Diversity Works Magazine, and plans to pursue a career in international investigative reporting. Follow him on twitter @therealspiess45
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Filed under: OPINION, VOICES FROM CAMPUS Tagged: Alex Spiess, campus crime, Keene State College, pumpkin, riots