Iowa State University’s recent VEISHEA celebration escalated into rioting, causing damage that will cost the city of Ames over $40,000, the university revealed to students in a rally event shortly after the disturbances occurred.
The damage total includes resources police used to subdue the crowds on campus, including mace, pepper spray and tear gas.
The largest student-run, alcohol-free celebration in the nation turned violent around midnight April 17 when an Ames police chief responded to a citizen’s complaint and broke up a 400-person party in the campus district that had begun to spread into Hunt Street, a street near Welch Avenue.
The police department closes off Welch Avenue, the main street that travels through campus, during the university’s VEISHEA celebration, Iowa State University freshman Emily Nordby said.
“They close off [the street] for the weekend and have vendors with cotton candy, hot dogs — like a fair,” Nordby said.
The festival also spills over into the Hilton Coliseum parking lot, near the university’s football stadium, to offer several carnival rides.
Some acts of vandalism included in the $40,000 total include six knocked-down lamp poles at $3,000 apiece and several bent-over parking meters at roughly $350 apiece.
Nordby said the $40,000 does not include damages done to private businesses along Welch Avenue.
“The estimate doesn’t even account for the windows smashed of the private businesses [along Welch Street],” Nordby said.
Iowa State University President Gregory Geoffroy said he was “saddened and disappointed” about the rioting on campus in a statement released shortly after the disturbance.
“I sincerely regret the damage that occurred to both public and private property … That kind of behavior is not what VEISHEA is supposed to be about, and we simply cannot tolerate violence and destruction,” Geoffroy said in the statement.
According to Nordby, the university held a rally to discuss the disturbance. Several students involved in the riots apologized and VEISHEA spokespeople described the celebration’s positive aspects.
Nordby also said several Iowa State students questioned the professionalism of the police involved in quelling the Welch Street riots. Some students complained about unnecessary acts of violence.
“Everyone was saying the police were out of hand — people were walking out of bars and got maced when they didn’t even do anything,” Nordby said. “Some bars even locked people in [during the rioting] or let people out through back entrances, but they all closed early around 1 a.m. after everything started.”
Nordby said more than 1,000 students participated in the VEISHEA celebration last weekend, as did more than 70,000 people from all over Illinois.
Iowa State’s Department of Public Safety released an updated crime alert Tuesday asking for student help in identifying people who vandalized city and campus property during the celebration.
Their website lists several pictures of people, not necessarily students, performing illegal acts of vandalism, including bending parking meters and spinning flaming garbage dumpsters around campus.
Students created VEISHEA nearly 80 years ago. The name is an acronym for five divisions of the university in 1922, which were veterinary medicine, engineering, industrial science, home economics and agriculture.
VEISHEA threw its first campus celebration in 1922 and has since evolved into the largest campus celebration in the nation, according to the organization’s website.
Nordby said university administration ran a poll debating whether to hold another VEISHEA celebration on the Iowa State campus, but the poll results are currently split down the middle.
