As hundreds of students waited to enter Lauinger Library for the Welcome Week and What’s After Dark’s “Party at Club Lau” around 11:00 p.m. last Saturday, Department of Public Safety officers tried to corral students into a single line, but some students say that the officers’ actions that night nearly caused a mob scene.
Sean Keady (COL ’13) had been waiting to get into Lauinger for 30 minutes before the DPS officers came out of the library to organize the line. According to students, the line was 10 people deep at that point, and there were roughly 100 people crowding around the front of the line near the entrance, with more students straggling towards the back of the line. The crowd of students stretched from Lauinger to Healy Hall.
“Students weren’t particularly rowdy,” Keady said. “There were just a lot of people. They weren’t confronting DPS officers and they weren’t trying to push their way [into Club Lau].”
Mark Stern (COL ’13), who was also on the line at that time, said the students were moving in place and were rowdy, but no one was pushing or shoving. “They were excited,” Stern said. “People come to Club Lau to be part of a part of a Georgetown community. People were talking to each other… [the atmosphere] was very much in the spirit of the community.”
At 11:00 p.m., DPS officers came from inside the library and demanded that students form a single line. The officers shouted at students with bullhorns to control the line, sometimes getting into their faces with the bullhorn. While some students decided to leave the situation at that point, other students started pushing and shoving each other to get a place in the line. Stern described the situation as “a few bullhorn shouts away from a mob scene.” Both students said the DPS officers were aggressive with the students from the moment they emerged from Lauinger. However, there were no physical altercations between the students and the officers.
Vice President for University Safety Rocco DelMonaco, Jr. was not available for comment.
Keady said that many students had been drinking, which did not help the problem. “My overall perception was that the DPS officers were not trained to handle the situation. I don’t think there are many events on campus [of this size], and there are not many opportunities for the officers to crowd control,” he said.
ANC 2E-SMD 04 commissioner Jake Sticka (COL ’13), who was also present at Lauinger, said he would be filing an official complaint about the handling of the line in front of the library. As of Wednesday evening, Vice President of Communications Stacy Kerr said that the University had “not received any complaints regarding the behavior of officers on Saturday evening.” Kerr encourages students to make a formal complaint if they do have concerns with how situations are handled by DPS officers.
“Safety of all students is our top priority and we take every case seriously,” said Kerr. “This is why we have a process for students to make a formal complaint.”
Stern, however, felt the incident at Lauinger was out of the norm. “I think the extremeness of incompetence in handling the event was out of the ordinary. There are some DPS officers who abuse their authority and this was one of the times. I think this proves we need to get a better dialogue about [DPS] officers’ authority on campus and how it is used on students.”
