Syracuse Ska Forum

east side townies get psched....

Since 2005, SU and SUNY- ESF have been sponsoring Mayfest, a “campus-wide, multi-venue event highlighting the wide diversity of student creative works on the campuses…MayFest is a day-long, continuous and simultaneous series of student performances, presentations, displays, screenings and other activities in a ‘festival’ atmosphere.’” Both universities cancel classes on this day so students can participate in the on-campus events. Part of the reason for organizing the Mayfest “block party” was to draw students out of our neighborhood where parties have gotten out of control in the past – like the Livingstock block party in 1999 (see below).



Last year some students decided they would rather party off campus during Mayfest. The Facebook announcement called for “filling the street-houses with the drinking heroes of this school; a bunch of happy, drunk, seniors from all over campus." The city and universities went out of their way to prevent a recurrence of Livingstock. University officials called party organizers in for a talk. City police went door-to-door in the neighborhood warning students about proper behavior. Police were on the streets that day to control the situation. Despite some noise, trash and quite a bit of alcohol consumption, party goers were relatively well behaved.



It was easy to predict this would become an annual event. Thirty-seven rental houses are participating this year and thousands of students are expected.



We saw last year what is required to keep this event under control: university and police intervention before the event and lots of police on the street the day of the event. Lt. Joe Sweeny of the SPD is right, the organizers, not the city, should pay for the extra police service. But we know students will never pick up the tab for this. That’s why the city should calculate all incremental expenses resulting from the neighborhood party, including property damage and cleanup, and hand it over to SU and SUNY-ESF.

Again, where are you getting this from? It seems to be a re-post, but you're not making that clear.

BTW, I was at Livingstock. It would never have gotten out of hand if the cops hadn't ignored all the under-aged drinking all afternoon when kids were getting shit-faced and then suddenly got so heavy-handed in trying to break it up after. It was as if the Syracuse Police WANTED a confrontation that day, which they got. I worked an amusement park in high school and we were taught better crowd control than that.

i'm not legally aloud to repost this....
hence no source quote
a