Think SpringFest Is Too Wild? Think Again



If you thought SpringFest was wild, you haven’t seen anything yet.

Students at the State University of New York in Cortland threw one of the biggest parties of the year on Nov. 16. For the past four years SUNY Cortland and Ithaca College have played each other in football and call the rivalry game Cortaca. After SUNY Cortland won the game this year, students there turned the streets of their off campus houses into a Project-X dream.

There were 4,000 to 6,000 people in the streets that day, and while the police did not call the party a “riot,” it had the makings of one. Beer cans, red cups, tables, chairs, pillows, and mattresses all filled the streets among the students. Students that lived on the street were grilling, only to throw their grills off the roof and into the crowd of students.

While this party happens every year, this year’s festivities were more extreme and no one really knows what the motive for the change was. There were close to 30 arrests and some people had to go to the hospital to get stitches for minor injuries, according to USA Today. There was a police car damaged along with other cars that were flipped.

Nothing was deemed safe on this day.

Students at SUNY Cortland flooded social media to show off the crowds and some of their drunken work. There are pictures of students jumping off of rooftops into the sea of people beneath them, a picture of a girl talking to a cop with a pasta strainer on her head, and endless tweets and vines of people getting out of control. There was enough social media material for the popular website BuzzFeed to compile a nice display of the best pictures, vines and tweets from that day.

SpringFest 2014 is still up in the air leaving many students a little worried about whether or not it will return. It is important for the school to realize that while things may get a little out of hand, SpringFest is nothing like what the SUNY Cortland kids were able to pull off.

As with any college party, there will be activities that some are not proud of, but that is something that is expected of college kids. While last year’s SpringFest got a little out of hand, at least MC students did not fill the streets of Broadway and completely destroy the place. The events of SpringFest 2013 consisted of house parties that led to noise complaints, while a few students did a little more which then lead to some time hanging out with the NYPD.

Vandalizing was minimal. The most major thing that happened was the destruction of the Student Activities sign outside their office. At Cortaca, students were spray painting the sides of houses, smashing in car windows and throwing beer cans into a flat screen TV.

While SpringFest may or may not happen this year, it is important to realize that MC could never pull off a feat like Cortaca. For Cortland and Ithaca, Cortaca is their biggest event of the year, just like SpringFest is for us. Both of these events have been going on for years, and MC has never even come close to the impact Cortaca has made on the community. The events of Cortaca should not impact the decision of whether or not SpringFest lives on.