Early Friday morning, five students were arrested by the Middletown Police Department after the University’s Public Safety officers were unable to break up an outdoor party on Fountain Avenue. About 200 students fled the area as police used pepper spray, dogs and taser guns.
When Andrew Price ’09 saw the police shooting canisters of pepper spray on Fountain Avenue, he began to run. Price claims that he then tossed his beer can, at no particular target, and began to move toward the Freeman Athletic Center. Price then realized he had company.
The Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) facilitated an all-campus forum on Friday afternoon in response to the incidents of Friday morning. A large crowd of students packed the first floor of the Usdan University Center for what became an almost two-hour long conversation about what exactly took place several hours earlier.
Although The Argus ended its regular printing schedule, we felt that reporting on Friday morning’s events was of the utmost importance to our community. We were dissatisfied with the media’s coverage and felt the responsibility as the student newspaper to report as we have always strived to do--objectively and from the students’ perspective. We decided to run this special issue to contribute to the solidarity that students have shown during this time. We encourage anyone with firsthand accounts of the incident to contact the administration and Middletown Police.
I think oftentimes we forget (I know I have) that we are not just students of Wesleyan University, but also residents of Middletown, Connecticut. As members of these communities, we have rights and responsibilities. We have a right to access all the resources these communities have to offer, we should expect to live in relative safety while we are here, we have the right to be treated fairly by all forms of authority.
I have never been so happy to have refused donating money to an institution. Last night marked a fitting end to what can charitably be described as a disaster of a senior year at a university that my family has bankrupted themselves to put me through. The litany of bullshit is monotonous and sickening.
Five years ago, when I was a senior at Wesleyan, I was arrested by the Middletown Police Department and charged with “Inciting Injury,” a Class C felony punishable by up to ten years in prison. I also got a nasty bruise on my cheek when I was thrown to the ground during my arrest.
I just read the news about what happened Thursday night. The Wesleyan community should not dismiss this as an isolated incident, and should address the history of prior police brutality cases. This situation resonates very clearly to what happened to me last year, and nothing was done about the situation.
To the vast majority of students who resisted peacefully last night: my hat goes off to you. Now is the time for civil disobedience, to prove to ourselves and to the world that we are morally justified in opposing this atrocity. We are now in the middle of a values-war, and we must demonstrate the strength of our standards and principles as superior to those who would do this.
At about 3:15 a.m., a group of about 60 students went down to the Middletown Police Headquarters to file civilian complaints regarding the handling of the evening’s events on Fountain Avenue. Some students took charge of distributing the forms while others sat and waited for a pen, which were in short supply.
I came down last night because I heard there were cops eager to join in the Fountain festivities. Having not finished my final papers for senior year (let alone started one of them), I was at home working. What better way to take a break than to come down and see a faceoff between two of the dumbest groups of people I can possibly imagine, police and drunken Wesleyan students?
s residents of 25 Fountain, we would like to relay our experiences with Public Safety last night and the conflicting messages we felt we were getting as to what we should have done to help the situation in front of our house.