Hil K

Hi everyone – sorry it’s taken me so long to put up pictures, but we have been so busy moving and we jut got our internet up in the new house.

Anyway, the riot was so crazy. I don’t really think we expected Umass to win the national title, we were the #3 team and Appalacian State was #1, but because of the riots following the Red Sox victory in 2004 there seemed to be a general concensus that current students wanted to do something even bigger. The riots took place in my section of campus, Southwest, where the towers are that house about half of all students who live oncampus – about 5,000 students. All during the day of the game there were extra police patrolling the campus and they even installed “riot lights” on the sides of the towers. which made it super bright at night.

When the game was over at 11:30 we looked out our window and saw people pouring out of the dorms into the quads below. It really didn’t seem to matter that we had lost. I went outside with my friends, but we stayed around the edges of the crowd, not wanting to get crushed in the big moshes. In the beginning of the riots people were cheering “Go Umass!” and it was as positive at atmosphere as a riot can be. Then, things started to go downhill.

The cops showed up around 11:45 in full swat gear. Nobody was really out of control at this point, but the police immediately began going to extreme measures to try to get everyone to leave. They started setting off flash bombs, which are so loud they make the whole ground shake and are so bright if you’re close to them you can’t see anything for a few seconds. They launched tear gas cans into the middle of the crowd, which sting your throat, lungs, and eyes and make you cough uncontrollably. Then, they started shooting rubber pellets out of what looked like paintball guns. Some of my friends got hit with those and they leave big bruises and really hurt. I managed to escape unscathed by those, but I inhaled a good amount of tear gas.

The riot then turned into an anti-police rally. Not that I am saying I support what my classmates were doing when they were lighting trees on fire, throwing rocks through windows, and throwing trashcans at the police, but i think the police responded inappropriately. They were shooting innocent onlookers and being overly-forceful. If they hadn’t been so harsh right off the bat, the students wouldn’t have responded in such a way and the whole situation wouldn’t have escalated so much.

It took the cops until 1:30am to dispurse the crowds. There were campus police, Amherst police, police on horseback, and state troopers called in to assist.

It was quite an experience to be a part of. My friends and I stayed right near the door of our building so we weren’t in too much danger of being shot at. I didn’t have my camera so I don’t have pictures, but there are many vidoes on UTube by students who were there.

This one I found is from the local news channel. Click on the “Watch the Video” link below the article.

This one was taken in front of my dining commons looking at my building. In the upper right-hand corner is my buliding. We were standing behind those bushes.

Here is the view from the tower next to mine.

Crazy, huh?