Then I realized that they had headed down towards E College ... You know, in front of my house. So I went around to that side ...
That's when I noticed my emails ... In the tradition of good university ideas (cough Binghamton cough), they had sent out a university-wide email announcement that they had canned Spanier and Paterno. Only, it had arrived AFTER the news alerts from the Washington Post, NPR, and the New York Times. Good job, team. Next time don't announce at 1130pm ... You ought to have seen this coming.
Anyway, I came back up to E College Ave on MacAllister Alley. I moved forward, but I couldn't see, so I stepped up onto the side of someone's huge monster truck style jeep ... Until students FLIPPED A NEWS VAN AND A STAMPEDE STARTED. That's when I decided I wasn't getting off the car until things got calmer ... You can see better pictures on the NYT blog ...It was chaos. Light posts were being shaken down and falling over the crowd, people would occasionally start to stampede to get away from things ... Oh, and then the police brought out the pepper spray (I heard people say tear gas, but I doubt it). Here's a video I took while I was on the car ... The yelling you hear at the very end is as the news van is going over, everyone is just realizing what's happening.
This was around the time that the cops started storming in yelling that everyone had better leave. We ignored them, obviously, for quite some time, until the crowd thinned a bit on College and an officer started pushing me and a friend up the street. I explained that I lived, you know, right there, and he continued to yell at us, saying "Last thing you wanna do is get sprayed, I've already told you to get out three times."
Lesson in PR: Don't be that guy. Incidentally, I think this was the same guy that threatened the crowd with "I can arrest any of you, I've given you an order to disperse and you're still here. I can ask you for your ID and arrest you." For what? Standing in the street? Not walking to my apartment that was blocked off fast enough? I kept it to myself, and allowed myself to be shoved and yelled at by various officers to go home, who simultaneously didn't want to let me GET to my home.
Here's one of the light posts that was brought down by students (in MacAllister Alley, right near my house) ... I saw one come down on Beaver, and then at least two more along E. College ... Very surreal.
Another light post came down further down the road, so half went running that way and the other half advanced toward all of us students on the campus side, screaming at us to keep backing up. I saw one trooper scream at a guy and shove him (hard), even though as far as I can tell the kid was walking up the hill and away as he was being told to do. Stuck around for a bit longer, but things seemed to have gone farther off, so I headed up College to go home. It smelled very strongly of gasoline ... Probably that news van that went down. On my way home I saw an older man sweeping up broken glass and a mess in the street ... I apologized to him, just the same.
Someone on Twitter said students were helping to clean up ... There wasn't a ton of garbage, but some stray shoes, lots of broken glass, lots of signs torn down or flipped over. It's sad that this protest will end up all over the news, but no one will stop to think about how hurt and betrayed the university is - which is what this is all about. I still hear some distant yelling ...
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That getting out of the crowd and onto the top of a crowd was a smart move. Glad to hear you're safe!
ReplyDeleteI liked on the NYT Blog they had Joe Paterno quoted as saying "go home and study and pray for the victims." It's interesting that the kind of man people feel is worth rioting for maybe is the kind of man who's worth rioting for because he doesn't think he's worth rioting for.