It's not surprising to anyone who has been paying attention to events on this campus that Palmerfest '09 almost turned into a riot. Students have grown tired of a university administration and a law enforcement system that are busy monitoring their every action as if they're small children and that treat alcohol consumption as a high crime. We have watched this year as serious crimes like rape have been committed while the Ohio University and Athens Police departments were busy making sure students weren't drunk. Protect and Serve has become a joke for students in this town; we feel neither protected nor served by law enforcement.
While it is obviously true that it became necessary to close down Palmerfest, and while the student behavior there cannot be condoned, it is ludicrous to blame students alone for the near-riot. It is also ludicrous to assert that the brutal actions of the police were justified. Maybe Palmerfest needed closed down, but was the use of pepper spray and batons really necessary?
It is time for the city, the university administration and law enforcement to recognize that they are going about things in the wrong way. Moreover, students should demand an investigation into police actions at Palmerfest. I had two friends who were Maced at Palmerfest, and all they were trying to do was leave. We all recognize that student behavior was out of control, but the city owes the student body an investigation into whether or not police behavior was equally reprehensible.
Nate Nelson is a junior studying political science.
4 Opinion
Letter to the Editor
