News Channel 8's story about last year's party turned "riot" at Wesleyan begins, "no one expected an end-of-the-year party at Wesleyan University to erupt into controversy...". It may be a snappy line, but it's not exactly accurate. The relationships between the Middletown Police Department (MPD), Wesleyan's Public Safety officials, and students had been strained for months before the "riot on Fountain" occurred last May. It isn't terribly difficult to draft a rough timeline of the major events that form the recent historical context of what happened last semester.

In the last couple years, the MPD has been allowed to come on to campus to help with breaking up parties and to deal with noise complaints and, for the most part, the results have been dire. If you break up a party by arresting students, then you haven't achieved anything. A forcible break up is a complete failure, whether or not the party ends at a desirable time. For years, Wesleyan has need to take stock of these situations, to hold student meetings and discussions with concerned individuals, police officers, and Public Safety officials. But that hasn't happened... or it hasn't happened on the scale it needs to. And it needs to be public and well-advertized, I might add. The only way to ensure that parties end on time and that noise guidelines are respected is to sit down and talk with students beforehand. We need preventative measures in these cases, not the messy, brutal idiocy of reactive measures. It's plain inefficient to blast rubber bullets when conversation would work.

Here's what should have happened on Fountain:
Police and Public Safety officials should have completely dispersed themselves among the crowds of students, instead of standing in groups away from the students, shouting at them to disperse. Once dispersed, each officer would begin simply talking to different smaller groups of students, asking them politely to leave and explaining that there were noise complaints and reminding them of the late hour... etc. The police and Public Safety officers would continue to circulate through the crowds for 15-20 minutes talking with students, remaining calm, reminding them that they had to leave immediately. They could use very plain, unaffected language to talk the students into dispersing properly. "Please move along. It's time for the party to end. We have had many complaints." The officers could calmly repeat these statements to each student they interacted with. The police would have accomplished a great deal this way, as the students wouldn't have become as defensive or belligerent.

Here's what actually happened:
The police went on a power trip and went in with the attitude that they had to 'bust up' the party rapidly. They yelled at students and weren't remotely approachable. They were rude and forceful. Students didn't react well to them at all and it escalated within minutes. (That's also part of the reason why I think that the police and Public Safety need to take a slower approach.)

Whose fault was it? Both of theirs. The students involved in the more riotous actions of the so-called riot certainly did their part to bring the situation to a ruinous end. They threw shit at the cops cars like cans, rocks, and whatever else was lying around. The police started off on the wrong foot and quickly raced into conflict. Both seemed to be looking for a fight, so to speak. The police wanted to boss the students around and the students wanted to fight the police, especially as the latter grew more forceful in speech and action.

In any case, students won't ever respond well to forceful measures. Simply put. it causes more harm than good to end a party with force. Many students who will be asked to leave a late night party will be tired or rambunctious or moody, and very likely drunk. Not a good combination. Is that the police's problem? Yes and no. The students should be responsible for themselves and their states of mind, yes. But the police have to be realistic about what elements they're going to be dealing with in such a situation in order to diffuse it properly. Ignoring the fact that the students will all likely be inebriated makes no sense.

But back to our hypothetical timeline of tensions between Wesleyan, students, P-Safe, and the police...

Why don't we start with the case of Jose Chapa '07, who was singled out and arrested by an MPD officer in April of 2007 at a party on Home Avenue? I'll just make the entire Argus article about the incident available here, so as to do this story justice.

Law enforcement: Middletown police arrest student on Home Ave.
By Eric Lach
Editor-in-Chief

While responding to a noise complaint on Home Ave. early Sunday morning, Middletown Police pepper-sprayed and arrested Jose Chapa '07, and many students are now wondering why police arrived on the scene in the first place, and whether such force was necessary.

Chapa, a Mexican-American, was one of several dozen students on the street at the time. He was arrested and taken to the Middletown Police Station, then released on bail shortly after.

Around 1 a.m., Public Safety responded to a report of suspicious activity in the backyard of 73 Home Ave. When they arrived, they investigated, found nothing conclusive, but did determine that the party inside the house included more than 50 students, and that the house had violated University social event rules. They then attempted to end the party, and encouraged the students to disperse. Meanwhile, the Middletown Police Department (MPD), apparently responding to a noise complaint, dispatched a number of officers to the area.

Chapa was not at the party on 73 Home Ave., instead he and two other students were heading toward 63 Home Ave. He was holding an open bottle of beer, and as he and his friends crossed the street, a MPD officer approached them.

"A police officer gets out of his car and starts saying 'hey pal, hey pal,'" Chapa said. "At first we didn't realize he was talking to us." The officer asked Chapa to pour out the beer, and Chapa complied.

"At that point, I thought he was going to leave us alone, but he proceeded to grab my arm," Chapa said.

"The officer started out the situation very aggressively," said Rae Kaplan '07, who was one of the students walking with Chapa.

Chapa began to demand that the officer let go of his arm. He tried to distance himself from the officer, but the officer pursued him further.

"And then he came after me, I felt threatened, and I didn't know how to react, so that's when I ran," Chapa said.

Chapa ran to the porch of 63 Home Ave., where the officer tackled him. At that point, the other MPD officers present, as well as a number of University students, attracted by the commotion, convened on the scene. A number of the students then began yelling at the officers.

"More students came after they handcuffed him, and that's when [the police] got more violent," Kaplan said.

"They grabbed me, they handcuffed me, and slammed my face in the road," Chapa said. "I was yelling, 'please let me go.' Then they pulled out the mace."

Student witnesses report hearing the officers continually yelling and swearing at Chapa and other students.

"We give you a hundred breaks a year, and you just piss all over us," one of the police officers, who identified himself as Officer Clark, said to the milling students.

According to witnesses, he also said there would no longer be any discretion given by the MPD to University parties. He did give students his badge number, when pressed.

Some students, Chapa included, wondered why Chapa was singled out, among all the other students on the street.

"I felt that they were specifically focusing on him, targeting him as a person among many on that street," said Erin Moore '07, who was also with Chapa at the time. "I noticed a difference in the way the officers spoke to me and Rae [Kaplan] in comparison to how they talked to Jose."

In September, students raised concerns about racial profiling when Middletown police broke up a party on Fountain Ave. Students claimed that due to the large number of students of color at the party, the police used unnecessary force and made overly aggressive threats. At the time, Ujamaa, a student of color group, pledged to use the incident as inspiration to work together, raise awareness, and educate. But Ujamaa has not received the cooperation they envisioned.

"Honestly it's been really difficult," said Ujamaa co-Chair Jane Charles-Voltaire '07. "We've been trying to schedule a meeting for the last semester and a half."

Saturday's incident was not the first student arrest to be subject to accusations of racial bias. On Oct. 8, 2000, Ray Dolphin '01, an African-American, was pepper-sprayed and arrested when he did not comply with an officer's order to leave the vicinity of 55 Oak St. According to an Argus article from Oct. 17, 2000, Dolphin was one of 20 students standing outside the house party. He was charged with interfering with a police officer.

The Middletown Police Department declined to comment for this article.

Editor-in-Chief Greg Dubinsky contributed to this article.